
Class 
Book 



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Copyright N?. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSnV 




,ii;(!®i4ilki!i 







The 

People's Hour 

And Other Themes 
GEORGE HOWARD GIBSON 

Original Drawings hy Ralph M. Grow 



Workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but 
your chains, you have a world to gain, — Marx. 

When the populace takes to reasoning — all is /os/.— Voltaire. 



THE ENGLEWOOD PUBLISHING HOUSE 
CHICAGO ILL. 






COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY GEORGE HOWARD GIBSON. 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 




243174 



CONTENTS 

Foreword 7 

The People's Hour 9 

The Point of View 11 

"The Sacred Right to Labor" 12 

Proof of Manhood 14 

The World for the Workers 15 

The Disturber (Roosevelt) 18 

The Working- Fighting Phalanx 20 

Joseph's and His Brethren's Dreams 22 

The Question of Room 26 

The Truly Great 27 

Something for Nothing 28 

Get Off the Earth 30 

By Combining Conquer 32 

Truth's Approaching Triumph 33 

The Heart of the Masses 35 

The Prevailing Blindness 38 

Give Joy Unconfii^ed to the Victors 39 

Respectable Business Selfishness 41 

The Manhood-Destroying Struggle 43 

Religious Individualism Valueless 45 

On Sunday at Church 47 

On Monday in Business 47 

The Gospel of Power 49 

Original Orthodoxy 50 

A Drowning Cry 51 

The Social Incarnation 52 

Use Up the Last Dollar 54 

Easy Lessons 55 

A Vanderbilt Poodle 57 

If I Were a Voice 58 

The Love of Comrades 59 

The Mad, Mammon-Worshiping World 61 

Their Annual Bath 63 

The American Marseillaise 65 

In Manhood's Name 67 

The Star Spangled Banner 68 



CONTENTS— Con/rnucJ 

Gentlemen, Let Me Make You Acquainted 70 

Power 72 

Our Line of Defense 73 

A Mistaken Versifier 74 

The Aliases of Evil 75 

"I Said in My Haste—" 78 

The Worst Kind of Kings 80 

The Common Greatness 82 

The Money Power 83 

Monopoly Mastery and Spoliation 86 

The Latest Good News 88 

The Right of Monopoly 89 

In Memoriam 91 

To an Ideal Labor Leader 93 

A Passing Power 95 

A Cry, and Something More 96 

The Common Life 98 

Thy Kingdom Come 100 

The Law and the Prophets 102 

The Sons of God 104 

God Save the People 105 

The Social Economy of Deuteronomy 106 

A Rich Man's Thoughts 107 

The Alarm Beat 108 

The Writing on the Wall 109 

Paradise Regained Ill 

The Get Together Gospel 114 

We Must Have a Ballot-Box Union 116 

Sunrise on the Hills 117 

When Men Are Wiser 1 19 

A Part of Heaven 120 

Faith's Service 122 

Progression 123 

Heaven 126 

Together 131 



ADDENDUM. 

Monopoly Versus The People [ Wentworth] 133 

The Basis of the Struggle [La Follette] ". 135 



VI 



V^ V^ Vs^ %^ "^ ^ ^ 



FOREWORD 

The author of this book is a working man, one who 
would be ashamed to live either lawlessly or lawfully on 
the labor of others. In periods of enforced idleness he has 
had time to become well informed, and to think around 
and through things. But experience has taught him most, 
and made him in manhood sympathy alive. He knows 
what the wage-workers and out-of-works are up against. 
All their problems have been his. This volume is of the 
workers and for the workers — and no others. The pro- 
fessional book reviewers who look for pleasing literature, 
and such of the book-reading public as care only for 
entertainment, have not been regarded. It is not a book 
for the class of people who are contented with things as 
they are, but for the overburdened, dependent, discon- 
tented masses. Its themes are vital, its language plain, 
its ideas necessarily disturbing to the income-drawing, 
labor-commanding classes. 

After all, one man is like another, like every other. 
Each man has in him the promise or possibility of un- 
limited development. All good is for all men who will 
together work for it. The natural measure of develop- 
ment for each and every man is the measure of good 



Vll 



communicable from all mankind, from an educated all- 
serving humanity gfowing up into Divinity. 

Is it not true that good dies when and where we limit 
it? There are no superioi* classes with separate, satisfy- 
ing pleasures. Art is not for the few, but must be the 
full up-flowering of the working life of the world. Let 
us have justice as the foundation of all good. Let us 
unitedly demand and command equal natural rights in 
the land and in the inseparable services of society; then 
all can live wealthily, healthily, ideally, and all work can 
be lifted into the realm of delightful art, or can be made 
easy with the science of economic machinery and abun- 
dant motive power. 

THE AUTHOR, 
419 W. 67th St., Chicago. 



vni 



The People's Hour. 



THE PEOPLE'S HOUR. 

The State — ^what is it, but the answering power 

Where cry the wronged, or where mute want must cower ? 

Greed cannot grasp its high and far dominion, 

Nor reach again fair Freedom's outflung pinion. 

The state is conscience, justice, law unbroken. 

The ten commandments — yea, the eleventh, Christ-spoken. 

The state is not a ruling king or kaiser; 
Nor parliament, nor congress of the wiser. 
Take the whole bunch of scheming politicians. 
Add wealth, add privilege, add class traditions, 
Throw in the courts to seal all deeds of power — 
And what are these when comes the people's hour? 

We are the people, rousing after slumber; 
We are the working masses — note our number. 
At last we feel as feels the man and brother, 
And rush to ranks, intent to help each other. 
By the Eternal, equal rights are ours, 
To mines and mills, to sunlit fields and flowers, 

God made the earth — His chidren, then, shall share it. 
The workers made all wealth — theirs, we declare it. 
Climb down, you income-takers, midst the workers ; 
G^t busy serving, all you soft-palmed shirkers. 
You plunderers all, respectable and striped. 
Henceforth it's sweat for every man-like biped. 



The People's Hour. 

It's work for all, hence work in reason's measure; 

Short hours, vacations, culture, travel, pleasure; 

Machines and power unlimited to labor, 

And no one scheming to out-trade a neighbor; 

Creation's joy sustained by recreation, 

And universal, lifelong education. 



He that will not work according to his faculty, let him per- 
ish according to his necessity; there is no law juster than that. 
Work is the mission of man in this earth. A day is ever strug- 
gling forward — a day will arrive in some proximate degree — 
when he who has no work to do, by whatever name he may be 
named, will not find it good to show himself in our quarter of 
the Solar System. — Carlyle. 

It is right and necessary that all men should have work to 
do. Work should be the chief thing in every human life. It 
should be worth doing; it should be pleasant; anxiety should be 
abolished in connection with human work; all shams and tricks 
and profits should be eliminated. Then we would develop art 
by the people — a joy to the maker and to the user. — William 
Morris. 

If manual labor is a blessing, not a curse, I want my share 
of it ; if it is a curse, not a blessing, I ought to take my turn. — 
Vida D. Scudder. 

Property can have no other origin than labor. Whosoever 
does not work has no right to obtain the means of existence 
from society. — Fichte. 

Those who labor in reality feed the pensioner (called the 
rich) and themselves. — Edmund Burke. 

The best way to comprehend is to do. What we learn most 
thoroughly is what we learn to some extent by ourselves. — Kant. 

10 



The People's Hour. 



THE POINT OF VIEW. 

To be looked up to, honored and respected, 

And draw an income from the class subjected; 

To grasp a measure of superior power — 

Through wealth, or law, or what seems mental dower- 

And feel in worth above one's serving neighbors 

As much as one can profit by their labors ; 

To live secure from want, with cultured classes, 

And give employment to the landless masses: 

So to be served and saved makes class and station 

Seem natural, and good for all creation. 

To be looked down on — reckoning worth by wages ; 
To work and want through life's dull, hopeless ages ; 
Long hours, long years to toil among wealth makers. 
And still remain dependent on its takers ; 
To sweat for others who yet do not love us, 
Creating incomes for the ranks above us ; 
To live a treadmill life, with narrow pleasures, 
Unthrilled by art, and wanting all its treasures: 
So with the rich to rank in correlation, 
Seems not so fair and fine for all creation. 



11 



The People s Hour. 



"THE SACRED RIGHT TO LABOR." 

The Parry-led Philistines, after profits and per cents, 
Disposed to stay in power and knowing whence it 
springs, 
Have gone to preaching ethics, with an interest intense 
In "the right of men to toil" — for them, the toil that 
tribute brings. 

And how they love the workers, 
The "free" non-union workers, 
The brave strike-breaking workers, 

The "heroes" known as scabs ! 
And how they hate the unions. 
The leaders of the unions. 
The solid front of unions — 

The class who won't be scabs ! 

"The sacred right to labor" — how zealously they urge 
it!— 
''The right to sell one's 'capital' as pleases one" — the 
boss; 
But, O, the blow to freedom when men with manhood 
merge it 
And follow trusted leaders into idleness and loss ! 

'Tis then they love the workers, 
The "free" non-union workers, 
The brave strike-breaking workers. 

The "heroes" known as scabs I 
And how they hate the unions. 
The leaders of the unions, 

12 



. The People's Hour. 

The solid front of unions — 
The class who won^t be scabs ! 

Somehow this narrow Parry-sort of Pharisaic preaching 
Sounds true and fair and Gospel-Hke when suitably 
applied ; 

The right of men to labor is good universal teaching, 
And that what is right is duty can by no one be denied. 

Then why lock out the workers, 
The brotherhood of workers. 
The faithful, able workers 

Who claim the right to toil? 
And why insist that shirkers. 
The income-drawing shirkers, 
The lily-handed shirkers, 

Should be exempt from toil ? 

The vital point at issue is, how wealth shall be divided — 
Shall those whose sweat creates it say, and none be 
born to rule? 
Or shall wage and life conditions by employers be de- 
cided. 
And the toiler be a purchased thing, a profit-earning 
tool? 

The right of all to labor, 
The need of all to labor, 
The blessedness of labor — 

Free labor — let us teach. 
And justice to our neighbor. 
Our robbed and wounded neighbor. 
Our long neglected neighbor. 

Let's add to what we preach. 

13 



The People's Hour, 



PROOF OF MANHOOD. 



A man is a man if he chooses to work, 
And scorns to Hve by the sweat of others. 

He is less than a man, who prefers to shirk 
And draw support from his toihng brothers. 

Mere lords and thieves and beggars belong 

('When they choose to be carried, and toil are shirking) 
To a morally loathsome, leech-like throng. 

The fear and torment of people working. 

Let infants draw from their mothers' breasts. 

Let children lean on the arm of labor; 
But curse the fellow full-grown who rests 

And feeds on the back of a toil-worn neighbor. 

You may curse divinely — and curse yourself. 
If more for less you are gladly getting ; 

Per cents and bargains of lovers of pelf, 
By Truth and Justice are called blood-letting. 



14 



The People's Hour. 



THE WORLD FOR THE WORKERS. 

By the toil of steel and steam, 

Save the ^people; 
Give them time to grow and dream. 

All the people. 
Banish hunger, grim and gaunt, 
Banish dreariness and want. 
Drive anxieties that haunt. 

From the people. 



*Even in this comparatively new, largely undeveloped coun- 
try more than half of the people are landless and must contribute 
a fourth to a third of what they receive in wages as rent. They 
must also produce in excess of the wages paid them dividends for 
the capitalists and interest for the banking and private money- 
lending class. Periodically also millions of those most poorly 
paid are thrown out of employment, because more has been pro- 
duced to sell above cost in wages than the wages paid will pur- 
chase. The ample underground stores of coal and oil and iron 
and other minerals, designed equally for all, constituting a part 
of the inalienable birthright of all, have been wrongfully deeded 
to the few, and enable them to dictate prices to the many. Any 
measure of monopoly furnishes the power to extend and increase 
monopoly exactions, to build up a greater monopoly ; correspond- 
ingly and correlatively, poverty compels contracts and exchanges 
which perpetuate and extend poverty. Thus it has come about 
that the so-called labor-saving, labor-multiplying-power machines 
have been bought up by capitalists, and machinery, steam and 
electricity benefit them alone. 

There are but two ways of living — ^namely, by the sweat of 
your own face, and by increasing the sweat of your neighbor's 
face — by doing the necessary work of the world, or by climbing on 
the backs of the workers. The workers could stand it to carry 
the robbers, thieves, beggars, forgers, embezzlers, counterfeiters, 
gamblers and other outlaws, they are relatively so few in num- 
ber. But the burden of the not yet outlawed income-drawing, 
respectable parasite class is becoming intolerable. 

15 



The People's Hour, 



Let us do it — the ideal. 

For the people ; 
Let us make the gospel real 

Reach the people. 
Millionaires and billionaires 
Seem to think the world is theirs ; 
But "the meek" are equal heirs, 

As the people. 

To the poor of every name 

In the nation, 
Let the Government proclaim 

Restoration. 
Blow the jubilee again 
For the landless, homeless men. 
And assure the masses then 

Occupation. 

Give the workers back their tools — 

Don't refuse them — 
Mines and mills, as well as schools; 

Let them use them. 
Loose the forces of the sky ; 
Let the harnessed lightning fly 
With the wheels of industry — 

God would use them. 

In creating there is joy 

(Tell the shirkers), 
Pleasures that can never cloy 

With the workers. 
And when all the wheels are driven 
By the tireless forces given, 
Earth will come to be as heaven 

For the workers. 



16 



The People's Hour, 




17 



The People's Hour. 



THE DISTURBER. 

Rough and ready cometh Teddy, 

Piatt and bullet-wise, to office. 

Confident as any novice; 

Great as Caesar, yes, and greater, 

Born to be the regulator 

Of whate'er needs regulation — 

Business, politics, creation. 

Modern Moses ! what a pose is 

His who harps upon square dealing, 

And attacks big business stealing ! 

Square ? Absurd ! Why, all are reaping 

Spoil, advantage, power — and keeping 

Those subdued in legal- fetters. 

With their children's children debtors. 

Sure as logic, demagogic 

Is the man who spurns from under 

What he chose to rise by — plunder. 

How was Roosevelt elected ? 

As the masses are subjected. 

Business gives to each his station ; 

This is a *'big business" nation. 

Business thrones him, business owns him ; 
Business is the power behind him. 
Business gives the word to bind him. 



18 



The People's Hour. 

Congress, courts, all politicians 
Bow to business for positions. 
High and low must wear the collar 
Of the world's almighty dollar. 

Not enthusing, but amusing, 
Teddy's turns with real power coping. 
And his talk of railroad roping. 
Not a trust has yet been bu'sted ; 
But Big Business got disgusted, 
Couldn't stand his tiresome teaching, 
Threats of law, and business preaching. 

So "The System" up and hissed him; 

Wall Street gently roared and rumbled, 

Bulls and bears together tumbled ; 

Dollars hid — while all affrighted 

Wondered, as the earth was blighted. 

Thus they bumped him, thumped him, crushed 

him, 
Tamed the President, AND *HUSHED HIM. 



*The foregoing was written Thanksgiving Day, 1907, under 
the first shock and submerging wave of the Wall Street anti- 
Roosevelt panic. The last line, of course, has turned out to be 
an overstatement, for nothing can tame the Roosevelt tongue. 
However, while the first of politicians had undoubted capacity 
for disturbing, when president, he was only noisy, superficial and 
irritating. The "malefactors of great wealth," concerning whom 
he has much to say, actually did finance the Roosevelt political 
campaigns. It was proved absolutely by the Hughes investiga- 
tion. And he must have known where the funds were coming 
from for those campaigns. 

Mr, Roosevelt is neither worse nor better than others in the 
business and political game. Business is business. Politics is also 
business — that is, an each-for-himself struggle. What's wrong 
with it? Everything, or practically nothing, Roosevelt does not 
see that the whole game is wrong. The rules of the game of get 

19 



The People's Hour. 



THE WORKING-FIGHTING PHALANX. 

Written at time of the 1902 anthracite strike and first pub- 
lished in The Pilgrim. 

Of fraternal deeds sublime 
Spread the fame o'er all the earth ; 

Sing, ye may, of manhood's prime, 
Sing of Brotherhood's great birth; 
Give the loyal miners meed of matchless worth. 
Hardest pressed on either hand, 
Firm in fellowship they stand. 
Steadfast, grand! 

Front and rear divided far. 
Mining comrades fight as one ; 

Workers all with strikers share. 
While the greatest deeds are done. 
Manhood thus its march of triumph has begun. 
Strikers fed, their strength renew ; 
Want and fear can ne'er subdue 
Comrades true. 



and hold and dictate and exploit are not meant to be fair. They 
are the rules — ^business, politics, government — of the rulers, that's 
all. There can be no square dealing between the dependent and 
independent. 

Sift it clear, and what is it Roosevelt, or Taft, or Bryan 
asks for the dependent class ? Nothing, absolutely nothing. They 
are trying to limit the plunder of the big exploiters, which would 
merely add to or preserve the plunder of the smaller exploiters. 
The exploited masses were not regarded and are not interested 
in the petty measures of the upper and middle class struggle. 
Suppose the big fine against Standard Oil had held in the highest 
court, it would not have relieved the wage-earning class in the 

20 



The People's Hour. 

Herald far the phalanx plan, 
Organize with greatest zeal, 

Put to proof the Social Man, 
Catch the thrill that comrades feel ; 
Strike together, and the mightiest throne shall reel. 
Corporate rule must pass away ; 
Comradeship's resistless sway 
Comes, to stay. 

Over all the names we know, 
Glorified by battle's rage, 

Mitchell's and his men's shall show 
On the far historic page, — 
First as brothers, bringing in the golden age. 
They in sharing showed the poor 
How to enter freedom's door, 
Barred no more. 



least. The suits against the packers have not reduced the price 
of meat. The Aldrich-Cannon-Taft revision of the tariff is like 
the Dingley and the Democratic Wilson revisions — a huge strug- 
gle between the greedy and the powerful for the spoils, but of no 
interest to the spoiled. 

Put aside preconceived notions for a moment and let us 
reason together. The trusts (Steel, Meat, Coal, Copper, Standard 
Oil, etc.) are great organizations of industry, as are also the rail- 
roads, telegraphs, telephones, express business, street railways, 
and the rest. 

It is inconceivable that any possible measure of governmental 
supervision of books and accounts can force the water from trust 
stocks, or so hedge about natural monopolies as to remove their 
power to exact tribute from the people. Private ownership on 
so large a scale as obtains at the present constitutes monopoly 
power which can be removed only by public ownership. And 
there is nothing about public ownership to fear. It is simply en- 
larging the circle of stockholders so that it shall include all the 
people, that all may share the benefits. 

21 



The People's Hour. 



JOSEPH'S AND HIS BRETHREN'S DREAMS. 

In one of his more recent political poems Kipling, 
with splendid power of thought and expression, dilates on 
'Things and the Man," undergirding his title with this 
text, from Genesis : 

"And Joseph dreamed a drearn, and he told it his brethren; 
and they hated him yet the more." 

The poem is individualistic to the limit, and is made 
to fit, in praise that could not have been greater had the 
individual been a Jesus, one Joseph Chamberlain. Here 
is the middle of the Kipling poem, the introductory stanza 
and the one ending ''Once in our time is there a man?" 
being omitted. What could be finer than this conception 
and description of one-man power: 

"He single-handed met and threw 

Magicians, armies, ogres, kings ; 
He, lonely 'mid his doubting crew, 

In all the loneliness of wings ; 

He fed the flame, he filled the springs. 
He locked the ranks, he launched the van 

Straight at the grinning teeth of things. 
Once on a time there was a man. 

''The peace of shocked foundations flew 

Before his ribald questionings. 
He broke the oracles in two 

And bared the paltry wires and strings; 

He headed desert wanderings ; 
He led his soul, his cause, his clan, 

A little from the ruck of things. 
Once on a time there was a man. 

22 



The People's Hour. 

''Thrones, powers, dominions block the view 

With episodes and underlings ; 
The meek historian deems them true, 

Nor heeds the song that Clio sings, 

The simple central truth that stings 
The mob to boo, the priest to ban. 

Things never yet created things. 
Once on a time there was a man." 

But this Joseph, as England's Colonial Secretary, and 
many think at the instigation of the Rand gold and dia- 
mond mine owners, dreaming of empire, precipitated the 
terribly bloody Transvaal war of conquest which crushed 
out the Boer republics ; since which he has supported these 
millionaires' demand for cheaper, imported Chinese coolie 
labor, at a fixed wage too low for whites or even Kaffir 
blacks to live upon ; finally, he has fathered a political 
scheme to tax the food of the poor of England in order 
to extend the reach and power of its ruling class. 

Such individualistic and ruling class dreaming and 
scheming deserve not to be praised at all. It is only those 
in whom is the universal, the common, the uniting and 
all-serving spirit who enter into what is for all great and 
good and lasting. In place of empire, let us all dream of 
brotherhood. 

So Joseph dreams, of brethren bowed 

Before a brother throned in power ; 
Of modern brethren who must crowd 

To masters, mightier hour by hour 

In wealth withdrawn from those who cower. 
But these have dreamed, as dreamers can. 

Of equal title, right and dower — 
And every dreamer is a man. 

23 



The People's Hour. 

Oh, ye who think the earth belongs 
To those with power to hold, to seize, 

Ye care not for the ancient wrongs, 
But force the landless to their knees. 
And on their shoulders climb to ease. 

So, borne, the lordly lead the van. 

Spread empire, tax, and starve, and freeze- 

And one, the greatest, ranks "a man!'* 

Ye masters, ye who rule as kings. 

Who more, who less, than man can be ? 
Against your thrones of gathered things, 

Your statesman, scribe and Pharisee, 

We mass the spirit of the free. 
We stand at last a workers' clan, 

A host that dreams of liberty. 
And every dreamer acts the man. 

A workers' clan — excluding none, 
Since fellowship was born to bless ; 

Opposing autocrats alone. 

But reaching out to all distress. 
And ending dread and loneliness — 

A growing, world-wide workers' clan 
Astir with cosmic consciousness. 

And God revealed in every man. 

Ignoble graspers of the world. 

Hence ; let oblivion hide your shame. 

For aye, let flags of blood be furled. 
And yield to peaceful workers fame, 

24 



The People's Hour. 



To honest toil the noble name. 
Yield each his place in Nature's plan — 

His honored place — with glad acclaim, 
Since God is God, and man is man. 



I take my place in the lower classes. I renounce the title 
of gentleman because it has become intolerable to me. 

Dear Master, I understand now why you took your place 
in the lower classes, and why you refused to be a gentle- 
man. — Ernest Crosby. 

I cannot myself understand how any one who knows what 
the present manner is can think that it is satisfactory. To me, 
at least, it would be enough to condemn modern society as hardly 
an advance on slavery or serfdom, if the permanent condition 
of industry were to be that which we behold; that 90 per cent 
of the actual producers of wealth have no home that they can 
call their own beyond the end of the week; have no bit of soil, 
or so much as a room that belongs to them; have nothing of 
value of any kind, except as much old furniture as will go in a 
cart; have the precarious chance of weekly wages, which barely 
suffice to keep them in health; are housed for the most part in 
places that no man thinks fit for his horse ; are separated by so 
narrow a margin from destitution that a month of bad trade, 
sickness or unexpected loss brings them face to face with hunger 
and pauperism. In cities, the increasing organization of factory 
work makes life more and more crowded, and work more and 
more a monotonous routine; in the country, the increasing pres- 
sure makes rural life continually less free, healthful and cheerful ; 
whilst the prizes and hopes of betterment are now reduced to a 
minimum. This is the normal state of the average workman in 
town or country, to which we must add the record of prevent- 
able disease, accident, suffering and social oppression with its 
immense yearly roll of death and misery. But below this normal 
state of the average workman there is found the great band of 
the destitute outcasts — the camp-followers of the army of indus- 
try — at least one-tenth of the whole proletarian population, whose 
normal condition is one of sickening wretchedness. If this is to 
be the permanent arrangement of modern society, civilization 
must be held to bring a curse on the great majority of mankind. 
— Frederic Harrison. 

25 



The People's Hour. 



THE QUESTION OF ROOM. 

There is always room at the top. — Daniel Webster. 

There is plenty of room at the top, 

A castle of ease and a crown ; 
But the people below are squeezed, you must know, 
They are crushed out of shape by the fortunes that grow, 
They bear up the weight of the world, with its woe. 

The weight of the top pressing down. 

There is room for a few at the top ; 

But how about those underneath ? 
Did not Deity plan for the average man 
When the purposeful ponderous planet first ran 
From the hand of its Former, and circling began. 

Ere those to inhabit drew breath? 

There is plenty of room for us all, 

And this was the law from the first: 
'Twas divinely decreed each should sweat for his need. 
Each should toil for himiself and be honest in deed ; 
The crowding is caused by the entrance of greed, 

A spirit for ever accursed. 



26 



The People's Hour. 



THE TRULY GREAT. 

Who are in spirit great, 

Where are earth's noblest found? 
Not in the halls of state, 

Not among men renowned, 
Not in the mansions fair 

Where wealth, proud wealth, resides; 
They toil in vain and fight despair 

In homes where W^ant abides. 

The classes count success, 

As robbers count their spoil, 
Nor heed wealth's cost and stress 

Borne by the mass who moil ; 
'Tis these who stand the strain 

Of earth's great load and need, 
Yet faith and manliness maintain 

While pressed by devilish greed ! 

And these, like gods, shall grow. 

With visions of the free — 
Their rights and wrongs shall know, 

Their power in unity. 
The classes, mean, shall cower ; 

The masses, men, shall stand 
With honest grasp and use of power. 

And all God's good command. 



27 



The People's Hour. 



SOMETHING FOR NOTHING. 

The robber is after your purse ; 

And you righteously curse 
Whoever would take without giving, 
The man who would steal for a living. 
Getting something for nothing is crime — 
Whether robbing direct, 
Or with arts none detect, 
Let's call it and make it a crime. 

You call for a gun— or a rope — 

And a jailer to cope 
With the horsethief, highwayman and sneak 
Who spoil the unarmed and the weak. 
It's right; drag them all off to jail — 

Every last mother's son 

Who robs with a gun, 
Every thief, should be helped off to jail. 

But wait. Are there wardens enough 

To lock up the tough ? 
Are the prisons sufficiently spacious 
To hold all whose greed is rapacious? 
How many are there who obtain 

More wealth than they give? 

How many who live 
On what they from others can gain? 



28 



The People's Hour. 



Wherever men meet in the mart 

Each thinks it is smart 
To drive a hard trade with his neighbor, 
To gobble his goods and his labor ; 
The more he can get than the worth 

Of that which he sells, 

The prouder he swells, — 
While he fences the poor from the earth. 

If '^something for nothing" is crime, 

There's a reckoning" time — 
A day when the just shall have risen 
To put all who plunder in prison. 
Oh, woe to the rich and the strong 

When Truth shall surprise 

Their refuge of lies, 
And land them where robbers belong ! 



^ N< 



How can one who lives without thanks upon the labor 
of others, who has been dandled all his life in the strong arms 
of the laborers so that his feet have never for a moment felt 
the drastic earth, who has never wrestled naked with God for 
a blessing, or felt a common elemental need — how can such 
an one know anything of the omens of history, how judge 
rightly and decide what is human and of immortal value in 
books and pictures, or what is just in laws? How can he 
fight the battles of the weak, or answer the questions of the 
simple; interpret the meaning of the prophets, or comprehend 
the passion of Christ? — Charles Ferguson in The Religion of 
Democracy, Funk & Wagnalls. 

Succeeding quotations from Ferguson are from this remark- 
able book. 



29 



The People's Hour. 



GET OFF THE EARTH, 

No trespass here ! Get off the earth, 

You own no land upon it ; 
You've lost for aye your right of birth, 

And we by might have won it. 
We landlords all have got you down, 

A list of poorest tenants. 
So climb the air, or jump and drown, 

And thus do dying penance. 

Get off, get off, get off the earth ! 

Our titles prove we own it, 
Get off, get off, get off the earth ! 

We can't have tramps upon it. 

"A right to life ?" Absurd, we say. 

And must our rentals feed you? 
Your seeking work from day to day 

Is proof that no one needs you. 
Your social value only lies 

In dragging labor deeper ; 
We use your hungry children's cries 

To make its prices cheaper. 

Get off, etc. 

You have no legal claim on men 
Who hold the land beneath you. 

The 'birds have nests, the beasts a den ;' 
But law does not bequeath you 



30 



The People's Hour.^ 



A place to live ; you're general slaves, 

Too poor to find a master ; 
Hence, driven forth to paupers' graves 

Or worse than death's disaster. 

Get off, etc. 

Your share of land with ours creates 

The thrones that crumble never; 
The title deeds to large estates 

Have made us kings forever. 
We live in luxury and pow'r, 

With slaves increasing 'round us ; 
And only those who cease to cow'r, 

The organized, confound us. 

Get off, etc. 



If you pass by the least considerable man, you pass 
by all the humanities and the divinities, and set your heart 
on what is transient and cheap. There is a wide ocean of dif- 
ference between taking in the last man and leaving him out. 
It is not a question of one man, but of humanity. If you leave 
anybody out, you must leave your own soul out, and must live 
thenceforth by the butler's standard. It is a fearful thing to 
belong to the exclusive circles. — Charles Ferguson. 

No idle man, however rich he may be, can feel the genuine 
independence of him who earns honestly and manfully his daily 
bread. The idle man stands outside of God's plan, outside of the 
ordained scheme of things ; and the truest self-respect, the noblest 
independence, and the most genuine dignity are not to be found 
there. The man who does his part in life, who pursues a worthy 
end, and who takes care of himself is the happy man. There is 
a great deal of cant afloat about the dignity of labor, uttered 
mostly, perhaps by those who know little about it experimentally ; 
but labor has a dignity which attaches itself to little else that is 
human. — J. G. Holland. 

31 



The People's Hour. 



BY COMBINING CONQUER. 

Fellow craftsmen, fellow thinkers, fellow moilers, 
Worthy workers at whatever tasks and place, 

Last and greatest looms the struggle of the toilers- 
'Tis the crisis of the ages that we face. 

Prize we freedom, prize we honor, prize we power? 

These are gifts that go together; they belong 
Not to those who plead for work and weakly cower, 

But to those who band together and are strong. 

Time has come when each must be a slave or brother, 
Stand alone and be exploited, or combine, • 

On the principle of each for every other. 

And with marshaled hosts confront the battle line. 

True as might is true, the strongest combination 
Is ordained to gain possession of the earth ; 

By the broadening of interests grows salvation. 
To the goal of universal wealth and worth. 



32 



The People's Hour. 



TRUTH'S APPROACHING TRIUMPH. 

O Truth, thou approachest with blessing, 

The shadows are fleeing away, 
The light of the dawn is increasing, 

And Evil slinks back from the day; 
As a bridegroom that leaveth his chamber, 

Rejoicing in strength for the race. 
Thou comest ! Thou comest ! Thou comest ! 

And heaven is seen in thy face ! 

Its glory has gilded the mountains. 
And soon, where the Spoiler has trod. 

We shall follow in light to the fountains 
And beautiful gardens of God! 

Thou'rt publishing peace to the nation. 

And helping the poor to be free ; 
Thou'rt bringing a present salvation 

From every injustice men see. 
Thy face is a terror to tyrants. 

It withers their strength and they fall; 
But to those who are under oppression. 

It seemeth the fairest of all. 

Its glory, etc. 

Thou teachest the folly of fighting. 

The waste of competitive strife ; 

Thou showest the need of uniting 



ZZ 



The People's Hour. 

In equal industrial life. 
Thou shamest the pride of the classes, 

Who prey on the landless and weak ; 
Thy light is a light for the masses, 

The hope of the poor and the meek. 

Its glory, etc. 

Oh, never a lie but thou knowest 

Its evil, its folly, its pain ; 
And never a good but thou showest 

How all its advantage shall gain. 
The earth shall be filled with the knowledge 

Of that which is helpful and just. 
And Truth shall disarm the Deceiver, 

And force him to grovel in dust. 

For glory, etc. 




34 



The People's Hour. 



THE HEART OF THE MASSES. 

Deep in the heart of the masses the spirit of manhood is 
moving, 
Quickened by social constraint and stirred into strenu- 
ous action ; 
Grouped by the power of oppression and driven perforce 
into loving, 
The workers are forming in ranks, and fellowship 
swallows up faction. 

Tyranny challenges m.anhood; and fellowship grows into 
fineness ; 
So shall the hidings of power be brought to a wondrous 
unveiling. 
Fellowship, fineness and might the trinity make of divine- 
ness, 
Masterful, working perfection, joined to the forces 
unfailing. 

Not from above can be looked for the spirit of comrade- 
ship needed ; 
Society sinks, or is saved by the masses despised and 
rejected. 
And better the rage of a people whose grievances shown 
are unheeded — • 
Better industrial war — than tyranny always accepted. 

35 



The People's Hour. 

Scathingly hot is the scorning a class giveth now to its 
traitors, 
When never were manhood and meanness in contest so 
desperate meeting; 
But struggling, a lover of lovers seems always a hater 
of haters, 
And better were brotherhood passion than brotheriess, 
heartless competing. 

Stern in their manhood and loyal must be the class that 
would master 
The forces gigantic of evil, the lords who so long have 
distressed us ; 
Fear not their strength or their fierceness, dream not of 
social disaster 
When for the poor and the weak they are striking the 
hands that oppressed us. 

Given a cause that is basal and broad as humanity's 
need is, 
Given a class that is conscious of interests firmly 
united — 
Moved by this bond and incentive, and growing as good 
as its creed is. 
The class shall march on with the cosmic, and ancient- 
est wrongs shall be righted. 

Union and freedom forever! Why in the struggle be 

parted. 
Men who in manhood are equal, men who the burdens 

are bearing? 
Workers alone can be noble ; and they are the tenderest 

heavted, 

Z6 



The People's Hour, 

They are the best and the bravest, who for their com- 
rades are caring. 

The man — the divine — that is in us we show in our 
outward relations, 
Our visible growth is the growth of bodies with 
brotherhood spirit; 
The kingdom shall come to the landless, to all the op- 
pressed of the nations — 
And when they shall stand by each other, as equals the 
earth to inherit. 



We can postpone the issue no longer. Democracy now 
at length, the world over, takes in the last man; and that is 
fatal to the old way of the world. For the last man is a mil- 
lion — the hitherto bulked, estimated multitude. It was some- 
thing that the masses should get themselves enumerated, and 
should become a multitude. But that is nothing to what is in 
store ; the counters are going to take a hand in the play. 

This is the very whirlwind of moral revolution. The 
world has never seen anything like it up to this date. Always, 
heretofore, revolutions have meant merely some wider dis- 
tribution of privilege, more top hats and togas, and that ten 
thousand instead of ten should mulct the multitude. But now 
at length it has been decided that the multitude should not be 
mulcted any more ; and this resolution, adhered to, will turn 
the world around and set the foundations of society on new 
and hitherto undiscovered bases. — Charles Ferguson. 

The problem of perpetual rest is as trying as that of perpet- 
ual motion and it has engaged the attention of whole generations 
of the most respectable families time out of mind. — Richard 
Whiteing. 

Z7 



The People's Hour. 



THE PREVAILING BLINDNESS. 

We are worshiping externals, and the good one day in 
seven, 
While the glory of the Infinite through everything is 
shining ; 
The paths of honest labor are the avenues to heaven — 
The gates of joy are open — yet we grope, and grope, 
repining ! 

WeVe restored the veil in worship, which the life of 
Jesus ended ; 
We've inclosed the Omnipresent in a sacred place of 
shadows ; 
So in factory and market we have lost the vision splendid. 
And we've fenced away the toiler who would find Love 
in the meadows 1 



88 



The People's Hour. 



GIVE JOY UNCONFINED TO THE VICTORS. 

Suggested by the growing liberality of the churches 
toward pleasure-seeking, as illustrated in the debate on 
Amusements in the Methodist General Conference at 
Los Angeles. 

Praises to Pov/er, unlimited pleasure now is allowed by 
the up-to-date preachers; 
Card-playing, dancing and theatre-going, they '^vote, 
need no more be prohibited. 
All else dividing the world from the Church long ago 
was allowed by our teachers, 
And good being all things desired, each must struggle 
to — er, get it distributed. 

Struggle, commercial, self-seeking, of course is the law 
of our social relations, 
The natural method of lifting the victors to rulership 
over us ; 



*The vote, following a very heated discussion of the proposed 
amendment to strike out of the discipline its prohibition of danc- 
ing, card-playing and theater-going, stood for the amendment 
188, against 441. So the prohibition of these pleasures remained 
the church law with Methodists, But it is a fact known to all, 
and urged by the minority who opposed the dishonesty of the 
dead letter, that the old requirement is not being and cannot be 
enforced. All the strong denominations and divisions of the 
Church have greatly changed their attitude or their practice, or 
rather have changed from the practice of the apostolic Church, 
in relation to worldly goods and power. And since the Church 
has sanctioned and indulged in the each-for-himself struggle of 
business, the struggle of each to command as much goods or 
service as possible from the rest, it follows logically and by the 
same self-seeking right that the property and pleasures struggled 
for belong to the victors in the commercial warfare, to their heirs 
and assigns forever. 

39 



The People's Hour. 

Struggle discovers the worthy, the elect, and establishes 
all in their stations, 
With Rockefeller ranking the highest, and spreading 

his goodness to cover us. 

Business is business — that settles a thousand and one of 
the old-time ethical notions ; 
The respectable self-seeking struggle takes rank of all 
good, as upholding all ; 
After it, resting upon its results, come pleasure and Sun- 
day devotions — 
But business, forget not, is sanctified while, under and 
over, enfolding all. 

Give joy unconfined to the victors, then, since by might 

men the earth must inherit. 
The struggle to gain from each other, held good, makes 

goodness no longer a rarity; 
It fixes, according to portion grasped (and grasped 

legally), the measure of merit 

"The poor in great numbers are with us ?" O yes ; but 
observe how they stimulate charity. 
And how could the poor have the Gospel preached were 
it not for rich men's sustentation ? 

And how could our colleges live were it not for endow- 
ments from millionaires ? 
The rich give us good news of heaven, and employment, 
and — ah ! well — tribulation. 

The while with our sweat we are building all thrones 
as one throne for the ^billionaires. 



*For those who have been cheated of their birthrights in the 
earth, for the masses who labor and are heavy laden, for the 
great multitude of common people who create wealth and suffer 
poverty we bring the good tidings of all good things at hand. It 
is not necessary to slave and suffer need generation after genera- 

40 



The People's Hour. 



RESPECTABLE BUSINESS SELFISHNESS, 

If commanding power you crave, 

Spell it plunder; 
Crowd the weak in deals, and save 

Selfish plunder. 
Swap your swag for titles clear 
To the fields and houses near; 
With the aid of fences rear 

Thrones of plunder. 

Realty commands its rents, 

Landlord plunder; 
Stocks and bonds their like per cents, 

Also plunder. 
Grasp of mine and mill and soil 
Gives control of those who toil. 
Makes the landless class who moil 

Lawful plunder. 



tion, waiting for relief in death, or for God to come in power. 
He chooses not to overawe the world. Even One with infinite 
power cannot so perfect a world, or complete for us a ready- 
made heaven. "The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's ; 
out the earth hath He given to the children of men." 

Judgment is in our hands. The final decision is with the 
majority. The voice of the people is the voice of God. The 
landless shall inherit the earth as soon as in the spirit of com- 
radeship they present a collective demand for it. All good waits 
merely on our getting together in a fraternal organization. There 
is a people's band wagon at the door. Climb into it, everybody. 
The working man who will not join the union of his trade and 
the party of his class is either pitiably short-sighted, or morally 
of the meanest. 

41 



The People's Hour. 



Might makes law, and law makes right- 
Think around it ; 

Wrong is strong, so right is might — 
Thus confound it. 

See what ceaseless tribute brings. 

Riches that shall ne'er take wings; 

Good is based on solid things, 
Power must bound it. 

Jacob, seeing Esau's need. 

Drives his bargains. 
Brothers we, in fact ; but greed 

Drives its bargains. 
Business wisdom, as of old. 
Prices man and God with gold! 
Heaven and earth are bought and sold 

In our bargains. 

Income-takers all have trod 

Workers under ; 
And they dare to worship God 

With their plunder ! 
Usurers, robbers, murderers they 
Who upon their brethren prey. 
Comes there, then, a judgment day 

For those who plunder ? 



People have got to be shocked to wake them up out of old 
absurd routine. Use paralyzes us to almost every injustice; 
when people are shocked they begin to think and inquire. — 
Harriet Beecher Stowc. 

42 



The People's Hour. 



THE MANHOOD DESTROYING STRUGGLE. 

This beastly struggle of divided, contending interests, 
culminating in monopoly and slavery, must give place to 
a national industrial corporation of citizenship stock- 
holders. 

O the eager strife for things, 
And the wretchedness it brings ! 
Each at war for private gain, 
Spreading world-wide want and pain! 
Slave and rival, lord and leech, 
Each the selfish foe of each! 
None we deal with seems to care 
How we live or what we bear. 
Brothers, comrades, lovers none; 
Struggling all our lives alone. 

Workers' lives are bought and sold — 
Going prices — weighed in gold ; 
Prices made by need and greed, 
''Might is right" the market creed. 
They who buy and they who sell 
Breathe the atmosphere of hell. 
All — the greatest and the least — 
All are branded by the beast. 
Brothers, comrades, lovers none; 
Each must struggle on alone. 



43 



The People's Hour. 



Covering all its lies with care, 
Business oft is bland and fair; 
But beneath its smoothest side 
Selfishness is yawning wide. 
Shoddy goods that rivals use, 
Truer merchants can't refuse ; 
Wages that the meanest give, 
Better men must pay — to live. 
Brothers, comrades, lovers none; 
Each must fight the world alone. 

Left to care for self apart, 
Plans for self possess the heart. 
Wife and children, made to bless, 
Spur and strengthen selfishness. 
Anxious thoughts of future need 
Hold us back from those who bleed ; 
Neighbors plundered, wounded, lie 
Near us — but we pass them by. 
Brothers, comrades, lovers none ; 
Each must love himself alone. 

Christ, as king, is downward hurled ; 
Craft and Greed conduct the world. 
Church men are no longer "fools;" 
Worldly wisdom shapes the schools ; 
Preachers now are hired to preach ; 
Teachers, too, are hired to teach; 
Lawyers all are hired to lie ; — 
Worship mammon, then, or die. 
Brothers, comrades, lovers none; 
Each must love himself alone. 



44 



The People's Hour. 



RELIGIOUS INDIVIDUALISM VALUELESS. 

We are learning at last that even when desiring good we 
cannot be saved individually. 

Few men can be found — apart from professional preach- 
ers — who would trust themselves singly to neighbor- 
love. 

There seems to be no faith in any church regarding 
brotherhood in material things. 

Christ has his temples, or places named as his and 
reckoned holy, where week-day mammon-worshipers 
congregate to hear and utter words religiously in- 
toned — and rest from strife ; 

But straightway on the morrow back they plunge into 
the thick of selfish, warring interests, and live as in 
the faith that gain is godliness, or good supreme. 

The eager, striving, grasping world, into which the visible 
church long since merged and lost itself, in effect 
declares that Christ-like love in business is out of 
place, impractical, impossible, a Utopian dream. 

And yet, how plain it is that almost the whole vast sum 
of evil flows and grows out of the selfish struggle, 
out of the scheming to gain at others' cost, and 
corner talent;, and land, and labor's needful tools. 

A word with those who bear the name of Christ and 

think themselves in love with love. 
Can love use selfish methods? Can love gain by striving? 

45 



The People's Hour. 

Can social love-life build itself out of the bottomless pit 
and mire of such foundations? 

Let. us have done with attempts to live a dual life, with 
preaching the love principle on Sunday, and prac- 
ticing its opposite on Monday. 

Our self-seeking may be entirely respectable, reputable, 
by the church uncondemned, and yet our week-day 
deeds make Sunday's worship mockery. 

''Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of 
Sabbath worshipers, ye shall in no case enter into the 
kingdom of heaven." "Ye cannot serve God and 
mammon." 

The long-prayed- for kingdom of heaven is at hand; it 
is not for those who hope to enter it by and by. 

It is the spirit and good of the whole controlling our lives 
individually. It is whatever helps forward the 
democratization of industry. 

It is not a mystical or formal communion, but a real 
union — for instance, trade unions of workers with 
membership loyal, with manhood set firm against 
tyranny, divine in their unity. 



oS \s I! ^ 



46 



The People's Hour. 



ON SUNDAY AT CHURCH. 

"How sweet, how heavenly is the sight, 
When those who love the Lord 

In one another's peace delight, 
And so fulfill his word ! 

"When each can feel his brother's sigh. 

And with him bear a part ! 
When sorrow flows from eye to eye. 

And joy from heart to heart! 

"When, free from envy, scorn and pride. 

Our wishes all above. 
Each can a brother's failings hide. 

And show a brother's love ! 

"When love, in one delightful stream, 

Through every bosom flows. 
When union sweet, and dear esteem. 

In every action glows ! 

"Love is the golden chain that binds 

The happy hearts above; 
And he's an heir of heaven who finds 

His bosom glow with love." 



ON MONDAY IN BUSINESS. 

How sad, how evil is the sight, 
When those who "love the Lord" 

On Monday mix in mammon's fight. 
And so destroy his word ! 



The People's Hour. 

Each "seeks his own," and counts as fair 

Whate'er the world allows; 
He grasps, who can, the larger share, 

Nor heeds his Christian vows. 

None deem it practical to love 

In struggling business life ; 
And can it be that God above 

Objects to selfish strife? 

A brother's tremblinsf words and sighs 

On Sunday move the heart ; 
But moans and groans and fainting cries 

Are drowned in Monday's *mart. 

The week-day robbed and wounded need 
A neighbor's strength and care ; 

But those who pass propose a creed, 
And, Sunday, offer prayer. 



*In the each-for-himself commercial struggle by which we 
live self-love is cultivated and neighbor-love neglected. All evil 
roots itself in that self-centering principle which we have accepted 
as legitimate in business. Every dollar that is gained in selfish 
struggle may be used in selfish gratification. It is legal to buy up 
the land and forever exploit and keep poor the millions who must 
use it. Unselfishness nowhere and at no time is required, but if 
inherent kindness, or the sense of universal kinship, be not en- 
tirely choked out and destroyed by business relations, the self- 
ishly intrenched and well-to-do may dare dole out something as 
charity. However, judged by the universally accepted business 
principle, every such giving of money or service is a work of 
supererogation. 

The business principle is that of warring commercial inter- 
ests. Commercial might is the measure of established right. But 
the hand-to-hand, brain-to-brain, family-against-family struggles 

48 



The People's Hour. 



THE GOSPEL OF POWER. 

Complete a man and brother, Jesus comes ! 

Take heart ! Rejoice ! The great Deliverer comes ! 

Fearless of soul, against all wrong he moves, 

And round him press the poor, whose friend he proves. 

His rage is just — and thieves from worship fly ; 
His words jar thrones — and priests cry, ''He must die!" 
The King of men heaven's law of love makes plain ; 
But all the ruling ranks oppose his reign. 

They killed the Christ. And who can save us now ? 
Two thousand years — and still the landless bow. . . . 
But hark ! Behold, where Truth full-orbed has risen, 
The Social Christ comes forth with power from prison! 

Its conquering strength united labor learns, 
And, joined in heart, all heaven unto it turns. 
The face of God through earth's dark clouds appears, 
And toil-worn hands ring in the ^'thousand years." 



of the past are being succeeded by group warfare, by corporation, 
trade union and ballot-box contests. Corporations and trusts are 
predatory bands developing along lines of monopoly and abso- 
lutism. On the other hand, trade unions and labor and Socialist 
parties are the squarely opposing armies which cultivate the 
brotherhood spirit, and lead on to the Co-operative Common- 
wealth, in which all will live by working, under equal natural 
rights and governmentally associated benefits. 

49 



The People's Hour. 



ORIGINAL ORTHODOXY. 

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. — Gen. 
3:19; II Thess. 3:10. 

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. — Lev. 19:18; 
Matt. 22:39; Rom. 13:10; Gal. 5:14; James 2:8. 

The land shall not be sold in fee simple for ever ; for 
the land is mine. — Lev. 25 :23. 

Is not this the religious exercise that I have chosen? 
to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy bur- 
dens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break 
every yoke ? — Isa. 58 :6. 

The Lord will enter into judgment with the ruling 
classes, the landlords and capitalists ; for ye have eaten 
up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. 
What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and 
grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord. — Isa. 3 :14, 15. 

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay 
field to field, till there be no place to live except as terms 
are made with monopolists. Woe unto them that call 
evil good, and good evil ; that put darkness for light, and 
light for darkness ; that put bitter for sweet and sweet 
for bitter. Woe unto them that are wise in their own 
eyes, and prudent in their own sight. — Isa. 5 :8, 20, 21. 

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a 
needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
God.— Matt. 19:24. 

He that hath given forth upon interest for an income, 
and hath taken increase, shall he then live? He shall 
not live. — Ezek. 18:13. 

SO 



The People's Hour. 



A DROWNING CRY. 

Oh, is there heaven for me? 

Earth has no room. 
Friendless, from man I flee 

Forth to my doom. 
Can God be hard and cold. 
Like those who strive for gold? 
Will he refuse to give 

Lost ones a home? 

Fainting with toil, I've borne 
Wages forced down. 

Work I have sought each morn, 
Facing man's frown. 

Now on the street I'm cast; 

Struggling, I sink, at last; 

Thrown from the slums of earth, 
Helpless, I drown! 

God save what man destroys, 

Reaching for gain; 
God curse what man enjoys. 

Bought with such pain. 
Worship ? It calls for toil, 
Justice to those who moil, 
Breaking oppression's yoke ; 

Words are but vain. 



51 



The People's Hour. 



THE SOCIAL INCARNATION. 

Mother of Jesus, thou wert still a woman, 
A common mother of a common man; 

And they exalt thee who declare thee human, 
A normal mother in great Nature's plan. 

A common man is the divinest being 

That God begets and mother-love conceives ; 

A common woman, so with God agreeing, 
Can give him sons to-day if she believes. 

Brood lovingly and labor, blessed mothers. 
In hope of other sons of God-like kind ; 

Jesus the elder must have many brothers 
Before the incarnate glory is defined. 

Think not of God revealed in one, most human. 
And since withdrawn; in natural life he lives, 

In. every babe of every loving woman 

Who reaches after good and, God-like, gives. 

Give only good, give greatness in gestation, 
Give breadth of vision to the opening mind ; 

Have faith as Mary in ideal creation, 

And link the unfolding life with all its kind. 

A son of God is one whose heart connects him 
And toil relates him to all human lives ; 

Who feels with all, so that their need directs him 
As for the greatest good he thinks and strives. 

52 



The People's Hour. 

How mean are lords of labor, feeling elateness, 
Compared with one who rightly lifts the hod? 

A commoner in spirit reaches greatness 
Of universal good, of very God. 

Despised was Jesus — numbered with the masses 
Of landless workers, robbed of rights in earth; 

A carpenter — he led against the classes 
The mighty union seen before his birth. 

Out of the pit of poverty sang Mary 

The world's Magnificat of love and power; 

For all the oppressed, whose heart and flesh are weary, 
She saw a time when tyrannies must cower. 

Though tarrying long, the kingdom comes — believe it; 

By unexpected means, by workers' worth, 
By common men united to retrieve it. 

The meek shall soon hold title to the earth. 

Stronger and stronger grow the federations 
Of those who toil, whose labor still is priced ; 

Nearer and nearer comes the dream of nations 

Ruled by the people's voice — the people's Christ. 




53 



The People's Hour. 



USE UP THE LAST DOLLAR. 

"An equal division of unequal earnings/* 

You say, with mock laughter, we're after today ; 

But not for the wealth of the rich have we yearnings ; 
Use up the last dollar youVe gathered, we say. 
Use up the last dollar, use up the last dollar. 
Use up the last dollar you've gathered, we say. 

Consume what you have when no longer you're "toiling," 

And no one will question who earned it for you. 
The thing we denounce is the work of despoiling ; 

It's eating your plunder and keeping it, too. 

It's eating your sponge cake, it's eating your sponge 
cake. 

It's eating your sponge cake, and keeping it, too. 

By usury's magic, while others are working. 

Producing and wanting, your wealth grows itself ; 

As kings and as princes you tax us while shirking. 
You conquer the workers by means of your pelf. 
You dictate to workers, you prey on the workers, 
You plunder the workers by means of your pelf. 

'Tis equal division of work, we're demanding. 
And laws which compel every eater to sweat; 

'Tis justice we'd force on your dull understanding 
Who think that the shirkers may hold us in debt — 
Who think the monopolists, grafters and shirkers 
May hold us, the workers, forever in debt. 

54 



The People's Hour. 



EASY LESSONS. 

Do you know why the markets are glutted and dull, 
And the hands of the workers, which ought to be full, 

Are lacking in power to obtain ? 
It's partly because what we make is controlled 
By wealthy employers — they gather and hold 
The goods, and a part of equivalent gold 

They keep, as legitimate gain. 
"Net profits," they call it, and so it is, too ; 
Net losses from many enriching the few. 
A growing advantage, a limitless power 
It gives, till the masses in slavery cower, 

And struggle in want and in pain. 

Do you know why the workers must live by their sweat, 
While others, no better, hold millions in debt. 

And never do aught but consume ? 
They craftily bought up our birthrights to land ; 
So live on the wealth that they take from our hand ; 
Their children forever are bom to command, 

And ours, to pay rental for room. 
Men fence up the earth they're too lazy to use ; 
And keys to the kingdom of God they refuse 
To famishing legions, who ask but to toil ; — 
The greater the number shut out from the soil. 

The higher its prices will boom. 

Did you never, in thinking, consider that all 
Are affected by losses they suffer to fall 

55 



The People's Hour. 

On those who are beaten in trade? 
First, men who are filling the markets will find, 
Injustice permitted reacts on their kind; 
Depression will follow low wages, and bind 

The strong where the weakest were laid. 
With wages or prices of products forced lower 
Than equity's line, a few will have more ; 
But many in need have no money in hand ; 
So labor is injured by loss of demand, 

Which spreads through the circle of trade. 

But he who does nothing, or nothing but plan 
To gain what the workers have made, is the man 

Whose loss is the greatest of all. 
He loses himself, and the love of his kind ; 
He sinks to the level of brutes, and is blind 
To the beastly reflection that's seen of his mind, 

A likeness to robber and thrall. 
Though one should win titles to have and to hold 
The whole of the earth, or its value in gold. 
The joy of creation exceeds it in worth; 
In honest wealth-wa^m^ true joy has its birth, 

And the workers stand God-like and tall. 




56 



The People's Hour. 



A VANDERBILT POODLE. 

Vm. a Vanderbilt pet poodle — hear me? 

Just a dog, like all the other dogs, 
Barking at the public who come near me; 

But observe my *"togs"! 
Yes, it took an easy thousand dollar 

Railroad dividend to buy and place 
Round my neck this poodlecratic collar, 
Kingly in its grace. 

And I shine, I tell you, at the parties 

Of the princely pups that live in style ; 
Not a dog of all the high-nosed ''smarties" 

Dares to growl or smile. 
Mistress says some people sniff their noses, 

And object to dogs in such a dress. 
Envious wretches ! Who that's sane supposes 
Princes' pets need less? 

More than this, says William (that's my master) : 

''Tell the workers, who pay all the freight, 
I am lord, and heed not their disaster, 

Since my wealth is great. 
Sweat, ye slaves of brutes, the wealth Fve taken 

And the legal rights I've gathered up. 
Build for us a throne that stands unshaken ; 
Serve me, serve my pup." 



*The rich spend small fortunes on the unnatural clothes and 
gold and gem set collars of their pet dogs. Poodle parties are 
also a plutocratic custom, at which the invited and assembled 
canines sit at the tables and are served with the choicest viands. 

But how can we declaim against the lawful and generally pre- 
sumed absolute right of the rich to spend their incomes as they 
please, unless we perceive and insist that any and all incomes 
drawn from others' labor are fundamentally and grievously 
wrong? 

57 



The People's Hour. 



IF I WERE A VOICE. 

If I were a voice, an eloquent voice, 

I'd travel the wide world round, 
To tell in the marts of the trampled hearts, 

And the souls that greed has bound. 
I'd show to the strong the hideous wrong 

Of robbing the meek who moil ; 
I'd picture the homes where hunger comes. 

And the treadmill round of toil. 

The beautiful face, the terrible face 
Of Justice my words should show, 

Till evil would shrink o'er the shadowy brink. 
And be chained in the depths below. 

The wealth that now rolls in usury tolls 

I'd trace to its rightful hands ; 
And robber and shirk, who are lords of work, 

I would brand with indelible brands. 
The hopeless hells where poverty dwells. 

Supporting the rich at ease, 
I'd hold to the light — with another in sight 

That is patterned, perhaps, by these. 

The beautiful face, etc. 



5S 



The People's Hour. 



THE LOVE OF COMRADES. 

The institution of the dear love of comrades. — Walt Whitman. 

Alone, unloved, we live, 

And heaviest burdens bear; 
For whether in strife we gain, or give. 

There is always want and care. 
We cannot with gold control. 

We cannot with things supply. 
The inmost need of soul for soul. 

The heart's deep hunger cry. 

O for the love of comrades, 
The dear, dear love of comrades ! 

For things, for power, we strain — 

As men who would grasp a crown — 
But all of our gain is loss and pain 

For those whom we trample down. 
And evil and loss return, 

With never a glad surcease, 
To those who spoil the hands of toil. 

And so their wealth increase. 

O for the love of comrades, 
The dear, dear love of comrades! 

Shall men be less than things, 

Arid ever the strife go on? 
The struggle for power results in kings ; 

But never a heart is won. 



59 



The People's Hour. 



The service of slaves — ah me ! 

'Twere better by far to gain 
One single heart than rule the mart, 

And so, unloved to reign. 

O for the love of comrades, 
The dear, dear love of comrades ! 

As love is born of love, 

And spirit alone has worth. 
Whoever will love, like those above, 

Begins to redeem the earth. 
In giving is all of gain. 

In loving is all of good ; 
And hearts in pain, in strife and strain. 

Are crying, with tears and blood: 

O for the love of comrades. 

The dear, dear love of comrades ! 



Freedom of contract for the laborer without capital is merely 
freedom to die of hunger; for how can he live if he does not 
accept whatever conditions may be imposed upon him? Freedom 
to go when he likes, is another meaningless phrase ; for is not the 
working man who has a wife and children tied to the spot where 
he is settled? How can he seek employment elsewhere when he 
lacks the means of satisfying his first needs. Freedom of labor, 
what is it, except the competition of laborers reducing their 
wages to the lowest point? — Von Ketteler. 

Always one class has preyed upon another class. The 
strong, from the beginning, have stolen their bread ; and, what 
is worse, they have despised their bakers. They have dis- 
credited the natural facts of alimentation, and they have 
sponged upon the poor. What hope of wise, deliberate science, 
of joyous, perennial art and permanent civic glory in a world 
that is ashamed of its stomach, filches its food, and despises 
the souls of laborers? What hope of religion if you flout the 
central sacrament of the body of God.^ — Charles Ferguson. 

60 



The People's Hour. 



THE MAD, MAMMON-WORSHIPING WORLD. 

Strange! Strange! 
That a man feels good when he's beaten another 
And fastened himself on the back of a brother! 

Isn't it passing strange ? 

But isn't it so? 
With Jacob we bargain at Esau's cost ; 
We're pleased with profits the hired have lost ; 
As gods (turned devils) we call for rents ; 
As usurers, gloat over cent per cents ; 
Our riches, religion and culture we roll, 
A straining mass, on each body and soul 
Of the landless class. We double their toil. 
And feast as leeches on those who moil. 
And then — and then, we patronize workers, 
And proudly fellowship robbers and shirkers ! 

Strange ! But isn't it so ? 

God pity, with workers 'tis so ! 
For among all classes is eager desire 
To rank, and grade, and to climb up higher. 
Away from the grime and smell of the soil. 
Away from the need of physical toil. 
Away from the vulgar, serving masses 
And in with the ruling, cultured classes. 
The whiter one's hands and the less one labors, 

61 



The People's Hour. 

The more he is thought of by friends and neighbors. 
Even with workers 'tis so ! 

Hence, hard is the task 
Of those who insist that all are brothers 
And live by their faith, to emancipate others. 
The rich raise the cry of ''Dangerous teachers !" 
The middle class fly from radical preachers ; 
The proletaire, blinded, are pitiful creatures, 
With spirit and courage blurred out of their features ; 

And fear makes a desperate task. 



^ 



Capital is said by a Quarterly Reviewer to fly turbulence and 
strife, and to be timid, which is very true; but this is very in- 
completely stating the question. Capital eschews no profit, or 
very small profits, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a 
vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 
10 per cent will insure its employment anywhere ; 20 per cent 
certain will produce eagerness ; 50 per cent, positive audacity ; 
100 per cent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 
300 per cent, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, 
nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being 
hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely 
encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade have amply 
proved all that is here stated. — P. J. Dunning. 

The great beauty of capitalist production consists in this — 
that it not only constantly reproduces the wage-worker as wage- 
worker, but produces always, in proportion to the accumulation 
of capital, a relative surplus population of wage-workers. Thus 
the law of supply and demand of labor is kept in the right rut, 
the oscillation of wages is penned within limits satisfactory to 
capitalist exploitation, and, lastly, the social dependence of the 
laborer on the capitalist, that indispensable requisite, is secured; 
an unmistakable relation of dependence, which the smug political 
economist . . . can transmogrify into one of free contract 
between buyer and seller, between equally independent owners of 
commodities, the owner of the commodity capital and the owner 
of the commodity labor. — Marx. 

62 



The People's Hour. 



"THEIR ANNUAL BATH.'* 

"Chicago waifs were given their annual bath." — News item, 
Chicago daily. 

A myriad infant innocents, 

Chicago's sons and daughters, 
Are kept in crowded tenements 

Beside these boundless waters ; 
And once a year the pitiful. 

The generous few, collect them, 
The poorest of the city full. 

And bathe and disinfect them. 

Water for once to cover with — 

But, oh, the wealth it costs us ! 
Ere one but bright day is over with 

Sweet charity exhausts us. 
So back to rags and griminess. 

To dark and desperate places, 
To reeking, rotting sliminess. 

We drive the pale young faces. 

It's needful — don't you see it is ? — 

To crowd our weaker brothers ; 
It's man's will, and the Deity's (?), 

That some should sweat for others. 
The stronger grasp earth's properties, 

And sell the poor employment; 
So labor spreads monopolies. 

And loses earth's enjoyment. 

63 



The People's Hour. 



But these, the disinherited, 

Children of wage dependents, 
As much of earth have merited 

As richest lord's descendants. 
'Twas strong and cunning knavery 

That robbed the landless masses, 
And sunk them deep in slavery 

Beneath the landlord classes. 

Midst death and hell, here under them, 

They hold the wretched millions. 
And, pressed by hunger, plunder them 

Of work whose worth is billions. 
Their greed devoid of malice is. 

Yet rolls a sea of anguish 
On those who build the palaces. 

And who in slums must languish. 



<X \\ IS % 



64 



The People's Hour. 



THE AMERICAN MARSEILLAISE. 

Air, 'The Marseillaise." 

Ye sons of liberty, defenders 

Of freedom and of deathless Right, 
Again the Lord of sabaoth tenders 

The sword of truth and bids you fight. 
Behold the poor and hear their cries ! 
Behold the poor and hear their cries ! 

Shall usurers bind babes in fetters 
Which keep the landless lifelong slaves, 
And even grudge us room for graves? 

Shall workers be perpetual debtors ? 

Unite, ye hosts of toil. 

Unite to live or die; 
Strike down the hands that now despoil. 

Strike, all, for victory ! 

Here, here where Liberty first lightened 

And freedom spoken shook the world, 
Where hope for all the humble brightened 

And mightiest kings were backward hurled, 
Lo here, where equal rights are pledged, 
Lo here, where equal rights are pledged, 

Are kings with all their brood of curses! 
In this broad land, by blood made free, 
Dependent millions bend the knee 

And plead with tears for sovran mercies ! 

Unite, ye hosts, etc. 
65 



The People's Hour. 

With "vested rights!" flung in our faces, 

They trample down the people's will! 
They crowd the millions from their places, 

And call on hireling hordes to kill! 
Above the earth they sit enthroned — 
Above the earth they sit enthroned 

And sweep their realm with hunger scourges! 
They drive the poor from Nature's stores ; 
For greater gain they lock the doors, 

And charge the crowd that round them surges ! 

Unite, ye hosts, etc. 

They claim the ways which commerce uses, 

As bold highwaymen robbing all ; 
They grasp exchange, and each refuses 

Its use till all before him fall. 
The people now are ruled by gold, 
By landlords, trusts and bankers' gold ! 

But shall we here be made the minions 
Of kings on freedom's sacred soil ; 
Or yield them wealth by slavish toil 

And meekly wear their galling pinions ? 

Unite, ye hosts, etc. 

Once more, once more are heroes waking. 

As dawns a righteous day foretold, 
And marching forth their cry is shaking 

The hideous shapes of evils old. 
By all, for all, our laws shall be, 
And land and tools for all shall be. 

The forming hosts of honest labor 
Shall give to each his place, his part, 
His manhood worth in every mart, 

And neighbor live at peace with neighbor. 

Unite, ye hosts, etc. 
66 



The People's Hour. 



IN MANHOOD'S NAME. 

On, brothers, to the battle ! 

Beat the drums, sound the bugle ! 
Lift Love's banner to the breezes high above you; 
Sweep, in growing moral light, for those who love you, 

Over every legal usurer's castled height; 

Crush the foes of freedom with your might ! 

All together, manhood powers 

Fling against the ancient towers. 
Clear the land of lords and titles that enslave us; 
Grasp dominion in the earth Jehovah gave us. 

Screws and racks and rents and bonds and cent per 
cents 

All belong with earth's outgrown events. 

Yet, comrades, hear the crying ! 

Mark the tears, fears, and sighing 
Of the prisoners who in hopeless hells are toiling ! 
See the landed, moneyed despots now despoiling! 

Note the myriads asking, seeking work in vain. 

Till they gnaw their very tongues in pain! 

Men, brothers, stand united 

Till the wTong has been righted. 
Throw your ballots thick as winter's storm has drifted ; 
Vote together till the latest curse is lifted ; 

Flash the glittering, fearful sword of Truth abroad, 

Till it seems the avenging arm of God I 

67 



The People's Hour. 



THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER. 

America, hope of the world, 
The flag that our fathers unfurled 
Unspotted, unsullied shall wave. 
Upborne by the honest and brave, 
And tyrants shall downward be hurled. 

Its blue and its bars 
And glory of stars. 
With thundered hurrahs, 
To freedom and justice shall lead, 
To freedom and justice shall lead. 

It cannot, it shall not be made 
For landlords a shelter and shade 

While preying on sons of the soil; 

The weakest among us who toil 
Hath, 'neath it, the people arrayed. 

Its blue, etc. 

Not yet hath it rescued the weak, 
And sheltered the poor and the meek — 

The rich sit above us in power ; 

But, under the flag, at this hour. 
We're massing, their fetters to break. 

Its blue, etc. 
68 



The People's Hour. 



"The stars in their courses" above 
Still fight for the cause that we love ; 
And ever, where streameth the light, 
The banner of freedom and right, 
The flag of the people, shall move. 

Its blue, etc. 




69 



The People's Hour. 



GENTLEMEN, LET ME MAKE YOU 
ACQUAINTED. 

Can you tell me, on the spot, 

What is so, and what is not? 

Is it true that Socialism 

Is the same as anarchism? 

Who are' anarchists today? 

Who are socialists, I pray? 

Which are you (if you are either) ? 

What are you, if you are neither ? 

Socialism ! Let us see 
If we cannot here agree : 
It is social — socialism; 
Therefore unity, not schism. 
''Each for all and all for each" — 
What more blessed could we teach? 
Comradeship, co-operation — 
These must be the world's salvation. 

Criticise it, you who can ; 

It's the brotherhood of man. 

No religion can oppose it ; 

No morality, that knows it. 

You who pray for ''kingdom come," 

Either mean it, or be dumb. 

You who place God o'er a steeple, 

Come and find him with the people. 



70 



The People's Hour. 



Anarchists in fact are those 
Who the common good oppose ; 
Each intent to gain from others, 
Making struggHng beasts of brothers ; 
Each one centered in himself. 
In a scramble after pelf; 
Or, monopolists, with power, 
Plundering the host who cower. 

Do you like things as they are, 
Rents, per cents, and endless war ? 
Incomes from the workers taking. 
Poverty for millions making? 
Do you love the rank that comes 
From the sweatshops and the slums ? 
Gaining more or less from labor, 
You are lawless to your neighbor. 



But if it should turn out that a common man may have 
access to the springs of beauty and the eternal health, may 
look out upon the universal landscape from a commanding 
point of view and see things in their proportions, may cease 
to have mere static relations to the cosmos, and may establish 
dynamic and vital relations, why, then, it is all over with 
tyrannies and vested privileges. Status must give way to the 
dynamic laws ; the arbitrary must yield to the essential. This 
is scientific ; it is the ultimatum of the modern spirit. In the 
presence of the natural facts we are not interested in the 
things that were agreed upon. Etiquette, custom, the maxims 
of the wise and prudent, tradition, politics and the Revised 
Statutes — must make way for the elemental forces. — Charles 
Ferguson. 

To really believe and accept democracy with the solemn con- 
secration that may mean sacrifice, is the most tremendous test of 
faith in God and man and man's power to attain the God-like 
that has ever been imposed on a helpless humanity. Belief in 
democracy is the last demand of idealism, — Vida D. Scudder. 

71 



The People's Hour. 



POWER. 

Here is all of inspiration, here incentive without end, 

Here the utmost good men dream of — each and every man 
a friend; 

Strength united, wisdom common, nature serving tire- 
lessly, 

Health and wealth and all ideals, in the union of the free. 

Come, ye hosts who cry to heaven, take and make the 
kingdom here ; 

Mass your wills and find your places, add your numbers 
into power ; 

Raise your wages, frame your statutes, claim and prove 
your title clear 

To the whole vast earth and heaven, and develop man- 
hood's dower. 

Struggle, but for one another ; plan, but plan for every 

one. 
Hand and eye are not in conflict, all collectively is done ; 
Socialize both work and product, widen out the corporate 

plan; 
Share and share alike as workers, recognizing man as 

man. 

This our watchword, GET TOGETHER, this our wis- 
dom, this our might, 

This the means of power unmeasured, leading on in paths 
of light ; 

All the law and all the gospel, massed and energized in 
man. 

All Divinity discovers, working out the cosmic plan. 

72 



The People's Hour. 



OUR LINE OF DEFENSE. 

Air : "Die Wacht am Rhein." 

'Tis freedom's sternest battle hour; 
Greed gathers all its forms of power 
To crush the ranks of brothers brave, 
To conquer those who stand to save. 

But freedom's land this still shall be, 

"Thy faithful sons will watch o'er thee"; 

America is ours, bequeathed to all. 

The people here shall rule, and kings shall fall. 

Shall craft succeed where force must yield. 
And men be slaves who ballots wield ? 
Shall manhood bend a suppliant knee, 
And plead for work or charity ? 

No ; freedom's land, etc. 

The avenues to nature free — 
These are the guards of liberty ; 
These round us, as the Rhine, must lie ; 
For these we raise our rallying cry. 

Aye, freedom's land, etc. 



73 



The People's Hour. 



A MISTAKEN VERSIFIER. 

"Man wants but little here below," 

An old-time rhymer wrote. But is it so? 

In strife for gain we count the world of worth, 

And say of So-and-So, "He wants the earth." 

Let's turn to sociology, and see 

With which idea the scientists agree. 

The first, the fundamental, need is health ; 
And after that we all are wanting wealth ; 
Next comes, association with our kind; 
And stores of knowledge for the opening mind ; 
Beauty about us rounds our pleasures full — 
Provided rightness keys and binds the whole. 
But O how few, of these, have more than part ! 
And who enough to satisfy the heart? 



74 



The People's Hour. 



THE ALIASES OF EVIL. 

Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil, that put 
darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for 
sweet and sweet for bitter. — Jehovah. 

There was a time when all per cents, and dividends and 

rent 
Were recognized as usury, and only evil meant ; 
Monopoly was barred by law and coveting was cursed 
When all the sons of Israel received the land at first ; 
Each child of every family inherited at birth 
(By theocratic law secured) an equal share of earth. 
No sale could disinherit the children yet to be, 
And once in every fifty years the law made debtors free. 

Jehovah has classed usurers with all the low and vile, 

With robbers and with murderers, and changes not the 
while. 

Today he loathea the pious sort who to his courts repair, 

The thieves who throng his temples to offer praise and 
prayer. 

Once, once whoe'er joined house to house and added field 
to field, 

A fearless prophet flung, at him the "woe" that God re- 
vealed. 

But righteousness no more is preached, the strong and 
selfish rule. 

And usury, re-named, supports the modern prophets' 
school. 

75 



The People's Hour. 

The law that each shall sweat for bread, earth's owners 

thrust aside; 
Their rents and dividend decrees perpetual feasts provide. 
The equalizing law of love — God's law for all the days — 
The gospel plan to save the poor, no one on earth obeys. 
A visionary mind has he, Utopian and strange. 
Who dreams that business selfishness to neighbor-love 

should change. 
The churches deem that selfish strife is needful first; so 

love 
They change to hateful charity, and robbers gifts approve. 

It doesn't make the darkness light to change its ancient 

name, 
An evil act that's legalized is evil, just the same ; 
But changing terms enables men to rob in royal style, 
To gather wealth from others' toil with patronizing smile. 
Just drop the names of evil deeds, re-christen wrong as 

right, 
Call usury rent, or interest, and black appears as white ; 
Endow, then, theologic schools to seal the preachers' lips, 
And all the rays of righteousness are lost in long eclipse. 

Monopolize what men must have — land, capital, ex- 
change — 

And usury will gather power in ever widening range. 

No hand can stay its conquering march till all are either 
slaves. 

Or lords who live in luxury, a ruling class of knaves. 

It grasps away the wealth from toil, so spreading want 
and woe; 

It breeds perpetual strife on earth and all the ills we 
know; 

76 



The People's Hour. 

The anxious care, repression, pride, temptations fierce 

and strong. 
All flow from base monopoly, the usury stream of wrong. 

But mammon-lovers all agree that use per cents are just; 
They pay the lords for being lords, and leave to toil its 

crust. 
And what has been must always be — the rich their rents 

must gain. 
They own the earth and needful tools, the sunshine and 

the rain. 




.sd^ ^ ^^ 



l^M^ 



77 



The People's Hour. 



"I SAID IN MY HASTE—" 

Men seek in exchanges to gain 

More value, more work than they give, 

Withholding the truth to obtain 

The profits by which they would live. 

The rich offer wages unjust. 

The poor man takes work as a prize, 

He must moil for a rag and a crust, 

He must work, and yet want, till he dies- 
Killed early by losses and lies. 

A cornerer grabs at the grain, ' 
The bread of the children who cry ; 

He's starving the poor, it is plain ; 
He raises the price, and they die. 

He gathers a million by might, 
And his right to it no one denies, 

So he says ; but his deed is in sight. 
And the case-hardened plunderer lies — 
The starver and child-killer lies. 

Another declares that the oil 

In reservoirs under the earth 
Wasn't given the millions who toil, 

But is his, by superior birth. 
He taxes the world as he will, 

Then piously poses and tries 
To think God is pleased with him still — 

78 



The People's Hour. 



For a share of the swag ! — but he lies, 
The oil dealer damnably lies. 

One man says the lightning is his, 
He bought it and put up the wire. 

He bought it ? Of whom, we would quiz ? 
He took it, the business-like liar. 

The lightning is ours, and our shares 
Should be work that it does over cost; 

These endless per cents, for his heirs, 
Are labor the people have lost. 
Are wealth they have foolishly lost. 

The coal baron boldly affirms 

The fuel was stored up for him. 
He dictates to miners his terms, 

And they toil by the light of the glim. 
The baron above is a swell. 

He eats and he drinks, and he dies ; 
But he finds in the furnace of hell (?) 

More heat than he wants for his lies — 

A lasting supply for his lies. 

Can people be honest and live 

In the midst of the struggle for gain? 
Can workers be free, and yet give 

To liars what liars obtain? 
O Truth, in thy majesty rise. 

And grasping the lightnings divine. 
In the chariot dread of the skies. 

Come forth, where oppressors combine. 

And shine, terribly shine! 



79 



The People's Hour. 



THE WORST KIND OF KINGS. 

Here's the latest in the line of the Astors, 
Just a '''baby, knowing nothing, 
Just a baby, doing nothing ; 

But he's one of our plutocratic masters, 

With a revenue and retinue of slaves. 



*The baby referred to here was born in November, 1891, and 
is principal heir or virtual crown prince to an American economic 
kingdom of New York City real estate. There are no duties con- 
nected with the rulership of this and similar kingdoms. The 
reigning lord appoints agents as tribute collectors, and the net 
revenues flow to him as regularly as the moon rolls round. His 
tribute from the landless is a per cent on property valuation 
several times greater than states and nations tax, and he is not 
obliged to spend it for the general welfare. It is considered abso- 
lutely his, and by investing all or a part of it in other rent-com- 
manding real estate, or stocks and bonds based thereon, the 
American domain of this foreign lord can be extended peace- 
fully, regularly and without limit. W. W. Astor, father of the 
baby above mentioned, has long been an absentee landlord, an 
alien, an English taxer of American labor. At the time this 
child was born his New York domain was estimated worth 
$150,000,000, and every day's work done subsequently in the 
great city, yes, and beyond — in the development of the conti- 
nental area which must use New York as its metropolis all 
work, all immigration and all American-born children must 
needs add to the rent-commanding power of the Astor economic 
dynasty. According to Mr. Jacob Riis, author of "How the 
Other Half Lives," landlords in the slum districts realize 15 to 
100 per cent yearly on their property; but let us figure Astor's 
net income from New York property at 6 per cent, or $9,000,000. 
This all has to be produced by subject workers, and is equiva- 
lent to the taking of $150 a year from each one of 60,000 families. 

Of course, home kings are no less oppressive than foreign 
kings. Land and capital monopolists are all alike, in taking the 
highest rent and per cent they can command. 

80 



The People's Hour. 

There are many thousand proletaire who toil for 

This one baby, knowing nothing, 

This one baby, doing nothing, 
And a host of other babies must be spoil for 

His fast growing, kingly retinue of slaves. 

Mothers bear them for the market that engages 
Wealth for dudes who count as nothing, 
Wealth for lords, who're good for nothing ; 

They'll be fettered by the iron law of wages, 

And earn tribute for monopolistic knaves. 

O what mockery to talk of independence, 

W^hen a baby, knowing nothing. 

And an alien, doing nothing. 
Wields a scepter o'er American descendants. 

Who must labor for and beg to be his slaves ! 



This land, America, shall be the land of the incarnation. 
On this ground the ideal is to come to terms with what is com- 
m.on and matter-of-fact. Here, on a grand scale, for the first 
time, labor shall be accepted without shame and death with- 
out fear. This shall be the country of material things, the 
land of the universal sacrament. We perceive that God does 
nothing for a show, or to prove propositions, or just to save 
souls ; therefore we will have no art for the sake of art, we 
will not be governed by preaching, and we will do everything 
for utility, as God does. — Charles Ferguson. 

People not paupers are all eager to take what is theirs of 
right; but anything in the semblance of charity is a bitter pill 
to swallow until self-respect is broken down. Probably the re- 
sentment lies in the recognition of the truth that it is much 
easier to be charitable than to be just. — C. D. Warner. 

81 



The People's Hour. 



THE COMMON GREATNESS. 

I sing not of the lordly ones of earth, 

Who claim the right to sit in seats of power. 

We all are equal — sons of men — at birth, 

Born to be God-like, using manhood's dower. 

Development comes slower, faster, as may be, 

By this and that experience made wise ; 
But growing, growing, one and all are we 

Who build with honest toil against the skies. 

All power must be the heritage of all 

Who working with it change environment; 

And even those bound down and held in thrall 

Shall scale the heights through social discontent. 

Nearest to Nature's heart, though now unknown 
Beyond the narrow round of neighboring lives, 

Vast numbers live whose greatness shall be shown — 
Good workers, loyal husbands, loving wives. 

All these have felt the Infinite, dreamed dreams 
Of beauty's kingdom, and bowed down in awe 

Before the wonder-working God, who seems 
Great love to express in all outworking law. 

They feel the power of immortality. 

The inspiration of the endless years, 
The reach of heaven — and in its star depths see 

Room for love's growth beyond earth's smiles and tears. 

82 — 



The People's Hour. 



THE MONEY POWER. 

The bankers and brokers by breed 
Are parasites, governed by greed, 
They haughtily fasten and feed 

On the sweat and the blood of the workers — 
As shirkers, they fasten and feed 

On the sweat and the blood of the workers. 

They crawled to congressional halls 
When war thundered hard at the walls. 
And while we were facing the balls 

They lobbied through bills for the shirkers — 
The workers, while stopping the balls. 

Were enslaved by a scheme of the shirkers. 

They locked up the gold they could get — 

A corner that drove us in debt 

And prices of everything set, 
By the scheme that reduced legal tenders — 

They doubled our trouble of debt, 
While they sold us their gold legal tenders. 

They crippled our greenbacks in trade — 
The national money we made — 
They stabbed in the dark, and waylaid, 
But it made them the masters of money; 

83 



The People's Hour. 

The nation they foully betrayed 
When they seized on its power to make money. 

Securing retirement that kills, 
They traded for bonds U. S. bills, 
The greenbacks that came to their tills, 

And were given bank-notes they could lend us ; 
Two values they got for our bills — 

Gold bonds and the notes that they lend us. 

For money the nation should own. 

Their debts and our credit they loan; 

So gold has extended its throne 
Till we stand in its debt countless billions — 

With only scant millions its own 
It has dragged us in debt countless billions ! 

The Shylocks, with endless per cents, 
Invest in the earth and raise rents, 
Form trusts, too, and industries fence. 

And in "frenzied finance" rob and revel. 
Oh, stronger than God seem per cents. 

But the gain is the gain of the devil. 

God '^curses you, usurers bold ! 

Corrupted with blood is your gold, 

You're worse than Barabbas of old 
With your schemes of oppression and plunder ; 

You sweat, starve and kill with your gold 
And your legalized system of plunder. 



♦Ezekiel 18:13. 

84 



The People's Hour. 

You ride in your pride with the high, 
Upborne by the toilers who sigh, 
And at bottom, competing, they die, 
Trampled down by the the classes that plunder — 
You heed not the masses who cry, 
And you trample on all who are under. 



*Let no casual reader of the ruling, or, if you please, of the 
successful, class needlessly misunderstand. The author of this 
volume has no bitter feehng against lawyers, politicians, trust 
magnates, capitalists, landlords, and bankers. They have their 
general justification and individual moral clearance in this, if it 
satisfies them — namely, that the each-for-himsclf struggle re- 
quires them. Rest easy if you can, my lords and gentlemen. 
But know, that there is a bottomless pit beneath, which you 
have produced by struggling and climbing and commanding. 




85 



The People's Hour. 



MONOPOLY MASTERY AND SPOLIATION. 

You have heard of the power of the sweaters 

Who press out the Hfe of the poor; 
You have wondered who fastened their fetters 

So cruelly deep and secure. 
You have learned of their eighteen hours' moiling 

In stifling, disease-breeding rooms, 
The pittance of pay for such toiling, 

And you shudder at thought of their homes. 

But it goes with the struggle of business, 

The struggle engaged in by all ; 
And if some command gain without labor. 

The workers must crowd to the wall ; 
If some may have gain without labor. 

The weak must be jammed to the wall. 

You have heard of the wealth of the Astors, 

And all who exact of us rent, 
You wonder who made them' the masters 

Of those who with labor are bent. 
They gather the goods of the workers 

And revel where want never comes ; 
The palaces shelter the shirkers, 

And the workers must live in the slums. 

You know of the bread speculations, 
A grab-all of things that men need, 

86 



The People's Hour. 

The despots who stint us in rations. 
Deciding their prices by greed: 

'Tis thus that their fortunes are builded, 

We pay for permission to toil, 
And from mansions that labor has gilded 

They sneer at the serfs of the soil. 

You have heard of highwaymen who lingered 

Where travelers' goods could be found, 
Who other men's money oft fingered, 

And hid in some hole in the ground ; 
The modern highwayman is smarter, 

He robs us by daylight, at will — 
Defended in law by his charter, 

He carries our coin to his till. 

The usurer, cursed by Jehovah, 

And classed with the bloody and vile, 
Has forced us to borrow, and cover 

Our life with his death-grip the while; 
Its interest eats without resting 

Whatever the borrower owns, 
So the usurer always is feasting 

On muscle, and marrow, and bones. 

O lovers of justice, shall shirkers 

Be longer allowed to enslave, 
And live by the sweat of the workers, 

The sons of the honest and brave? 
Shall the years of the future still find men 

Who toil while the idler receives, 
And law and monopoly bind men 

W^ho happen to fall among thieves? 

87 



The People's Hour. 



THE LATEST GOOD NEWS. 

God is coming, good is coming, 
Where the wheels of power are humming, 
Where the laboring cataract dashes, 
Where the harnessed lightning flashes, 
Where the smitten mountain shivers. 
Where the stored-up sunlight quivers ; 
From the deeps below, above us, 
Comes the Infinite to love us. 
Lay your burdens on the Tireless ; 
Call, and listen for the Wireless. 

Good is here ; we've but to take it ; 
Good depends on man to make it. 
Think the thoughts divine in nature; 
Find the plan for every creature. 
Use the law in all its courses ; 
Merge and multiply the forces. 
Truth is unity — embrace it ; 
Power is unity — so face it; 
Love is unity — salvation 
Grows as grows co-operation. 



88 



The People's Hour. 



THE RIGHT OF MONOPOLY. 

It is very common to inveigh against monopoly power 
and tribute without considering how much is involved 
in the condemnation. In nearly all cases those who 
judge individuals are condemning themselves. The right 
of monopoly, or the right of might, is right, if men 
have a right to be selfish. Monopoly power grows up 
out of the self-centered struggle, and must be continued 
till the struggle is ended by the political action that 
democratizes ownership and industry. 

While a man owns the earth, or several shares of it, 
may he not do what he will with his own? Is it not 
right to use what power one has in commercial dealings 
with one's neighbors, or one's fellow men? May not a 
man do as well for himself as he can by buying in the 
cheapest and selling in the dearest market? Is it not 
right to charge all one can get for what one has, and 
to demand labor products without labor if one has a 
legal monopoly and can require of the workers interest, 
rent and net profits? 

It is quite the common practice to answer these ques- 
tions in the affirmative. It is common to feel that it is 
good, very good, to get more for less and something 
for nothing. When it is the other fellow who gets it, 
we feel different, however. But the selfish who are 
beaten at the game should make less outcry, or them- 
selves entertain a different spirit. 

He who draws more or less income from the sweat 
of others, under any title of power whatsoever, cannot 

89 



The People's Hour. 

very effectively denounce and disturb his more powerful 
partners. Practice before preaching would seem to be 
needed in order to give one's words living power. But 
here again is a grievous difficulty for the truly unselfish. 
The individual finds himself in a tangle of unavoidable 
commercial transactions. By the needs of his existence 
he is involved in the selfish acts of others and cannot 
alone free himself. So far as he must deal with the 
stronger, he must accept their terms and prices. If he 
possesses a measure of monopoly power, or superior 
natural talents, he will be considered a fool, or a mere 
charity giver, if he refuses to command and take what 
he has power to take. If he takes as he has power in 
order to give, he remains in business an Tshmaelite 
among the Ishmaelites, and in his charities he is not a 
brother. The dispenser of charity remains a superior 
being, a little god, as it were, and his gifts degrade 
those who are content or compelled to receive them. 

If in dealing in the commercial way one were to 
refuse to take interest, rent, dividends, or net profits, 
he would usually be playing into the hands of the selfish 
and so would increase their power. Suppose one has 
stock in a railroad. Will it do any one any good for a 
stockholder to refuse to take dividends? If one's prop- 
erty is in bonds, or bank stock, or factory shares, or 
mines, or farm land, or townsites, refusing as an indi- 
vidual to take monopoly tribute would merely strengthen 
selfish power in others. The scale of wages cannot be 
so raised. The rightful rewards of labor cannot so be 
divided back into the hands of the workers. The present 
system of selfish commercialism cannot be individually 
patched up, or cured of selfishness in individual parts. 
The evil of the whole system is vitally, inextricably inter- 
woven into every part of it. 

90 



The People's Hour. 



IN MEMORIAM. 

Mourn for a farmer gone, 

He who in strength became 
Worthiest to lead us on, 

Wielding Truth's sword of flame ; 
Honored by honest men, 
Hope of the humblest men. 
Millions commanding when 
Heaven called his name. 

Earth lords take rest o'er thee. 
Dead in thy splendid prime ; 

Working men weep for thee, 
Leader in love sublime. 

Fighting to disenthrall, 

Brother endeared to all, 

Earth felt a giant fall 
When 'twas thy time. 

Philip of Macedon, 

Fighter of phalanx fame. 

And his yet greater son 
Joining the spears became 

91 



The People's Hour. 



Captains invincible; 
Grander thy *work we tell, 
Felt in the gates of hell, 
Tyrants to tame! 



*To deserve honor a man must needs be honest, that is, he 
must work for his living and produce as much value as he con- 
sumes or uses. The man here eulogized, President L. L. Polk of 
the National Farmers' Alliance, was such a man. He was more 
that the accidental head of a great social-economic body. He 
had in his inmost being the spirit which unites men, the sense 
of common inseparable interests on which solidarity and resist- 
less power depend. When he died, in 1892, he was leading mil- 
lions of allied farmers in demands against the monopolists of 
land, transportation, money, telegraphs, etc. A wider organiza- 
tion, for all the workers, uniting us at the ballot-box, and the 
v/orld-wide search for good will be discovered and realized for 
all in justice. 




92 



The People's Hour. 



TO AN IDEAL LABOR LEADER. 

Master of modern chivalry, 

Our strength, our pride, our boast. 

Through love's unconscious rivalry 
Leader of labor's host; 

First errant-knight in cause of right 

And mightiest of the sons of light, 
All honest men, all noble men, must love thee — 
And hell can never move thee. 



Hater of sin's insanity, 

Man's selfish strife for gain, 
Lover of all humanity, 

Feeling thy brothers' pain, 
The Christ of creeds is in thy deeds ; 
Thy love is great as human needs. 
Shall tyrants' power, or craft, or lies o'erthrow thee 

Dear heart, true heart, we know thee. 

Splendid has been love's offering, 

Thy fight for all oppressed ; 
But men are saved by suffering, 

So Hate has pierced thy breast. 
Thy shivering lance and dauntless glance, 
Thy foremost place in Truth's advance. 
Have fired the hearts and drawn the darts of evil. 

Of Greed, the ruling devil. 



93 



The People's Hour. 

Brother, these weapons thickeninp", 
And baleful fires that burn, 

Movements of friends are quickening, 
And these thou now shalt learn. 

On either hand good comrades stand 

To help thee win our worth, our land, 
No foemen's lies, or cries, or spies divide us ; 
And God's own light shall guide us. 



It has been supposed that we could first settle the bread 
question, and then proceed to finer issues. But there are no 
finer issues — there is nothing finer than common bread, unless 
it be bread of a finer kind; or than a cup of water, unless it be 
a cup of wine. The palpable, real world is unfathomable, 
mysterious, spiritual, and there is room in it for the most 
magnificent adventure of the ideal. It is not necessary to go 
apart from it in order to think or to aspire ; the dignity of 
thinking is in labor, and the dignity of labor in thinking. The 
sphere of economics is without bounds ; it takes in all the fine 
arts and the unnamed finer arts, and there is no magnanimity or 
love that cannot be expressed somehow in terms of bread and 
wine. — Charles Ferguson. 

Luxury is indeed possible in the future — innocent and ex- 
quisite; for all, and by the help of all; but luxury at present can 
only be enjoyed by the ignorant; the crudest man living could not 
sit at the feast, unless he sat blindfold. Raise the veil boldly; face 
the light; and if as yet the light of the eye can only be through 
tears, and the light of the body through sackcloth, go thou forth 
weeping, bearing precious seed, until the time, and the kingdom, 
when Christ's gift of bread and bequest of peace shall be unto this 
last as unto thee ; and when for earth's severed multitudes of the 
wicked and the weary there shall be holier reconciliation than that 
of the narrow home, and calm economy, where the Wicked cease 
— not from trouble, but from troubling — and the Weary are at 
rest. — Ruskin, in Unto This Last. 

94 



The People's Hour. 



A PASSING POWER. 

Is economic lordship throned for ever, 

So long as earth swings through the sunlit skies? 

Oh, will its yokes be broken never, never. 
By manhood mergers that may yet arise? 

Possession seems how strong and how respected! 

And they are weak from whom wealth drains its power. 
Makers of law, and so by law protected, 

The usurers reign, the landless sweat and cower. 

This greed insatiate has its generation 

In faithless, fighting, foul, self-centered life; 

But man was made to fill a nobler station, 
With reasoning mind to see the harm of strife. 

Could blind, self-centered vision, craft in preying 
And ignorance check the onward sweep of light. 

Then would the poor, in changeless shadow staying, 
Lose heart with hope and yield to Evil's might. 

But Wrong will skulk when stripped of strong illusion; 

Its mightiest form must hide when daylight nears ; 
Its strength is error, and in swift confusion 

Its power shall pass when Truth full-orbed appears. 

Uncloak the tyrants and expose old errors, 
Flash light around the usurers' kingly class ; 

Discover justice, and fix wholesome terrors 
In every man who as a lord would pass. 

There is in Manhood potency resistless. 
There is in union overmastering strength; 

In combat with the forces cold and Christless, 
The marshaled workers shall succeed at length. 

95 



The People's Hour. 



A CRY, AND SOMETHING MORE. 

"Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!" 

The labor of life is a strain, 

And its wages supply not its wants; 
I am beaten and worn in the struggle for gain, 

And Fear is a specter that haunts. 
I am yielding the price of success, 

Thrice over, to lords who control. 
And am bending and breaking because of the stress-— 

I am losing the light of my soul. . . . 

Sing me a song! 
For its joy and its concord shall thrill me again 
With a sense of the Power that is stronger than men. 

There seems no one on high to reply 

To the desperate cry from the deeps ; 
There seems nothing but force in the earth and the sky 

To list to a woman who weeps. 
The things that we battle so for, 

Man-made, are appraised above man; 
And so we continue the pitiless war. 

Refusing the brotherhood plan. . . . 

Bring me a rose ! 
For its breath and its beauty shall answer my cry — 
There's a God in the world, there's a throne in the sky! 

96 



The People's Hour. 

NOW justice comes jarring the earth, 

NOW Love is abroad in the land; 
A man shall be reckoned of infinite worth, 

The least with the greatest shall stand. 
Here is God — where the workers unite; 

Get in line with your kind and be strong; 
As comrades we all shall have masterful might. 

And the earth shall be flooded with song. . . . 

Friend answereth friend; 
Group adding to group shows an infinite trend, 
And the glory of All is revealed at the end. 



We can have universal suffrage, but with monopoly of 
land, women will be ground down by enforced poverty, and 
starving children will still cry for bread. We may pass restric- 
tive laws regarding the sale of alcoholic drinks, but while the 
present land system obtains the crowded condition of cities will 
continue to breed drunkards. Labor may in its desperation 
organize to revenge its wrongs by strikes and boycotts, but they 
are powerless while the usurpation of landlords extracts the 
product of their industry through rent. — William Lloyd Garrison. 

We will make here a clearance of every law-made privilege 
and monopoly, and we will make it intolerably hard for other 
countries to maintain privileges and monopolies. There shall be 
newspapers at length and universities, and there shall be ideas 
that march. We know that we cannot win liberty or justice 
for one country without winning it for all countries; that to 
lift one is to lift all, that the load is an Atlas-load. But the 
shoulders of democracy are broad. — Charles Ferguson. 



97 



The People's Hour. 



THE COMMON LIFE. 

Unlimited power for the whole of mankind has been 
planned ; 

Force cogs into force and, untiring, serves all at com- 
mand. 

Good gathers in numbers, in groupings — Combine, and 
combine, 

Was the word of creation ; and so it is mine, it is thine. 

What I lack I am finding in fellowship's blessed ex- 
change ; 

Complementary one of another — so, onward, we range. 

I am. I am all men. I'm rising through all things to 
God. 

I am adding ideals of beauty that spring from the sod. 

I think with the landscapes, the oceans, the cloud world 
and storm ; 

I delve in the mines, and I climb where new star systems 
form. 

Relations of unity make us all-conscious, divine; 

The spirit of matter, the spirit of spirits, is mine. 

I fear not the finite — 'tis passing, as shadows unreal; 

I dwell with the infinite substance, the true, the ideal, 

God's thoughts are in crystals, in flowers, in dewdrops 
and spheres; 

And with these I am building me mansions for number- 
less years. 

98 



The People's Hour. 

I search out the secrets of perfumes of dew-sprinkled 

mom; 
I spread me the ravishing colors which sunset adorn; 
I labor for love's sake, and, tireless, art's tasks would 

prolong ; 
I turn me all power into music, all work into song. 



The stupefying spell of custom has been broken. The 
conspiracy of hebetude has been betrayed. Ideas, colossal, 
magnificent, are in the saddle, and are sailing the sea in ships. 
There is thunder in the air and ozone. 

Oh! democracy of dead lift and suction, democracy of 
pull and haul, of covetousness, cautiousness and cunning, they 
give you up at last. You are not worth while. And your 
sapless platitudes, your sentimental pieties and patriotisms, they 
spew them out! 

Aliens ! A new democracy — yet the oldest — shall renew the 
world. — Charles Ferguson. 



<X M :S %> 



O^ 



x^ 



99 



The People's Hour. 



"THY KINGDOM COME." 

"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." 

Let us sing of the kingdom to come, 

The kingdom of peace and good will, 
Where the folly of striving the selfish shall see 
And the suffering masses at last shall be free, 
With abundance the hungry to fill. 

It is coming — the law of the poor, 

A gospel of power for the weak; 
Production by system can gather a store 
That for all (who shall labor) is ample, and more, 
When the earth shall be shared by the meek. 

What is love, to a neighbor professed, 

When a gang who are stronger surrounds. 
If we leave them to rob him of profit and rest. 
Of the fruit of his labor, or find him distressed 
And heal not his festering wounds? 

As the sounding of brass seem the creeds 

While the practice is each for himself; 
The possession of love is disproven by deeds, 
And the evils of life, its temptations and needs, 
Grow out of the struggle for pelf. 

What is love that professes to care 
To save from a hades unseen, 

100 



The People's Hour. 

Yet watches the poorest forced down to despair, 
And millions with burdens that others should share, 
Yet stands not for justice between? 

It is unity only can save, 

Division and strife must destroy; 
For the strong in the struggle will always enslave, 
And the landless, o'erburdened, are dragged to the grave, 

While idlers and robbers enjoy. 

The people oppressed must unite, 

Must move like an army in line ; 
Then workingmen's ballots shall win in the fight. 
And our laws shall be changed to conform to the right, 

The law of the kingdom divine. 

They shall build, in the kingdom to come. 
And dwell in the houses they raise; 

They shall plant, and the earth shall be fruitful and 
bloom 

For the workers, and each, in his beautiful home. 
Shall dwell to the end of his days. 



Do you wonder that the fine arts are overfine or under- 
fine ; that their beauty is wistful ; that the literatures lapse and 
die, and the great scriptures of the world, given for joy, sound 
in our ears only of judgment; that history swirls in dizzy, 
bewildering cycles ; that science is full of panic and terror, 
and philosophy is only a v/an surmise? It is to be written on 
the sepulchers of the old cities : They took the bread of the 
poor, and they despised the souls of the laborers. — Charles 
Ferguson. 

101 



The People's Hour. 



THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS. 

Hush a moment! Hear the sound 
Going up the world around ! — 

'Tis the moaning 

And the groaning 
Of the host oppressors wound ; 

'Tis the sighing 

And the crying 
Of a thousand millions bound! 

Mother Earth's great heart is throbbing 
While she hears her children sobbing, 
And the pitying heavens resound. 

Tyrants, hear it. 

Ay, and fear it. 
"Justice!" is the prayer they utter, 
"Judgment" is the word they mutter — 

And the Lord of sabaoth listens 
To the laboring millions bound. 

He who speaks in crashing thunder 
Yet shall break our bands asunder; 
Bickering flame and roaring torrent 
Yet shall sweep and roll thereunder. 
And the throne of God shall triumph 
Over all our foes abhorrent, 
Over all who bind and plunder. 

102 



The People*s Hour. 

Hear and heed the ancient warning, 

Ye who equal rights are scorning; 

Think not men can stand unshaken 

On the land their greed has taken. 

He who made the clouds and fountains, 

Smoothing plains and lifting mountains, 

Storing earth's exhaustless treasure, 

Storing each an equal measure, 
Still is Lord of all the ground 
And of those who fence it round — 
Judgment in his hand is found. 

Therefore fear divine displeasure. 

Justice comes! Injustice showing. 
Hatred of its power is growing. 
Justice tarrying, to be tested. 
Rises as the floods, white-crested. 

Once in ages long before 

Did its winds and waters roar; 
Rumbling, muttering voices, grumbling, 

Jarred the depths and heights profound; 
Whirling winds and waters swirHng 

Swept away each ancient bound; 
Even the firmament seemed falling — 
Deep to deep was loudlv calling. 
As, with hopeless shrieks appalling. 

Hell enlarged its yawning wound. 



103 



The People's Hour. 



THE SONS OF GOD. 

Out of the world-stuff Love breathed on, joined in the 

darkness and fire, 
Out of the nebulous deep — as gods coming forth from 

the sea — 
Out of all matter and motion and wisdom come souls 

that aspire 
And that wrestle with Nature forever, divinely to know 

and to be. 
Perceiving the lines of ideals, and working with God in 

degree, 
We add to unfinished creation, we rise and assume its 

control. 
We conquer the fear of the finite, with spirits that 

never can tire, 
Pursuing the greater and better, we press toward the 

goal; 
We pass from self-centered division into the vast and 

the free. 

And the Infinite thrills us and fills us with boundless 

desire ! 
So from the cosmos we're coming, to compass and equal 

the whole 
And climb by the light of the stars to the heaven that 

is higher. 

To the fathomless being of Love, to the Soul of our 

soul, 
To the Father of spirits eternal, enthroned in the "cloud" 

and the "fire." 

104 



The People's Hour. 



GOD SAVE THE PEOPLE. 

"God save the king!" — so were the people taught, 

Till freedom had its birth, to sing alone. 
They lived, they died — they suffered, sweat and fought^ — 

To please a despot and advance a throne. 
But now we sing — 

God save the people, the common people, 
God save, God save the people. 

"Call no man lord, for ye are brethren all" — 

This word of truth dethrones all earthly kings ; 
And so we stand erect where slaves would fall. 

We bow alone to Him who freedom brings. 
And loudly sing — 

God save the people, the common people, 
God save, God save the people! 

The feudal barons built on heights of power 

Their castles, ruHng all the country 'round ; 
The lordly classes now, by deed and dower, 

The working poor throughout the land have bound. 
But now we cry — 

God save the people, the common people, 
Unite and save the people! 



105 



The People's Hour. 



THE SOCIAL ECONOMY OF DEUTERONOMY. 

O God, the unchangeable God and just, 
Is wealth obtained by the power of lust. 
By selfish struggle and grasp of trust. 
By corporate greed that says "You must" — 
Is war (the system of wealth discussed) 

The way of divine economy? 
Is usury now, as of old, accursed, 
And monopoly loathed by thee, as at first? 
Or is wrong made right, and good reversed. 

Since the time of Deuteronomy? 

If God be God, the selfish are fools, 

Who practice and preach and teach in the schools 

The science of greed, with its grab-all rules, 

Monopoly titles and grasp of tools. 

And cost and profit of men and mules — 

The system of legalized knavery. 
For men must worry and women must weep. 
And hunger must hound and cold must creep, 
While usury gathers a limitless heap. 

And labor is lost in slavery. 

The law to Adam and all his race — 

A rational law and a law of grace — 

Is this : that each in the sweat of his face 

Shall eat his bread. And we all can trace 

The outline here of a changeless base 

On which must be built society. 
But if land is sold for ever, to keep, 
Then labor must beg to be purchased cheap. 
And men must struggle and women must weep. 

And our lives must be filled with anxiety. 

106 



The People's Hour. 



A RICH MAN'S THOUGHTS. 

I have followed the rule of each for himself, 
And have won me place, and power, and pelf. 
I was keen in trade, getting more for less ; 
I took advantage of men's distress. 
The power machines for myself alone 
I bought, and upon them reared my throne. 
Coal and lightning and steel and steam — 
And slaves — have builded for me my dream. 
I hired the hungry at wages low, 
And they sweat to make my fortune grow. 
Foreseeing in cities immense demand. 
Where railroads center, I bought the land. 
Its rents keep rising and rolling in; 
So never an heir of mine need spin. 
I have won us a kingdom on land and sea, 
And my vassals wait for a nod from me. 
As tribute comes in I invest, and invest; 
And my business agents do all the rest. 
My titles are clear, and the law is strong; 
What's mine is mine — and the world lasts long. 

I have power — but, somehow, it isn't enough, 
For I feel alone in the midst of my stuff. 
Comradeship, fellowship, intimate friends, 
Were lost in pursuing my business ends. 
Even in my home it is hard to prove 
That a single act is an act of love. 



107 



The People's Hour. 



THE ALARM BEAT. 

United we stand ! Do you hear it, 

Ye workers who struggle alone? 
In union is strength — and they fear it 

Who reign on monopoly's throne. 
When workers united demand it, 

Defining and voting for right, 
No power upon earth can withstand it. 

No law of the tyrants we fight. 
Unite, then, unite ! 

O workers with ballots, unite! 

Divided, we're sweating for others, — 

They buy us for less than we're worth ; 
They mock at the claim that we're brothers 

Their equals, in right, to the earth; 
But we who are sold may be rulers — 

As Joseph, in Pharaoh's sight — 
And want be removed from the workers, 

Each having his own, as is right, 
Unite, then, unite ! 

O workers with ballots, unite ! 

We've voted for tricksters who ride us. 

The tools of the rich and the strong; 
And if they in future divide us 

'Twill fasten the shackles of wrong. 
If bosses can Wind us and lead us 

In opposite armies to fight. 
Such party division will bleed us, 

And right will be mastered by might. 
Unite, then, unite ! 

O WORKERS WITH BALLOTS, UNITE. 
108 



The People's Hour. 



THE WRITING ON THE WALL. 

"At the feast of Belshazzar and a thousand of his lords, 
While they drank from golden vessels, as the Book of 

Truth records. 
In the night as they reveled in the royal palace hall, 
They were seized with consternation — 'twas the hand 

upon the wall. 

" 'Tis the hand of God on the wall, 'tis the hand of God 

on the wall ! 
In the scale of justice measured the record reads, 

'Found wanting' — 
And the hand keeps writing on the wall! 

"See the brave captive, Daniel, as he stood before the 

throng 
And rebuked the haughty monarch for his mighty deeds 

of wrong! 
He interpreted the writing as the doom of one and all; 
For the kingdom then was finished, said the hand upon 

the wall." 

" 'Tis the hand," etc. 

In the last days of Louis, see the merry king of France, 

While the common people perish, with his lords and 
ladies dance. 

109 



The People's Hour. 

They despised those who labored, and attending rout and 

ball 
Only laughed at the warning of the shadow on the wall. 

"Tis the hand," etc. 

'Tis the last feast of Mammon, and a myriad millionaires 
Whom the workers have created coldly turn from Labor's 

prayers. 
But the end that approaches sends a shudder through 

them all, 
For they see a hand above them and their record on the 

wall. 

" 'Tis the hand," etc. 



We cannot be separated from the rest. In spite of 
tariffs, the illimitable seas and all the old ethnic jealousies and 
exclusions, the world has all things common. Whatever happens 
to one man, happens to everybody. You cannot take your tea 
and be careless of the coolies. You would have to settle with 
them anyhow in a thousand years. You must settle a great 
deal sooner now, considering the regularity of the mails and 
the facilities of circulation. 

There is no social question anywhere that is not in the 
United States. There is no sort of tyranny, profligacy, or hard- 
ness of heart in any other country that is not here. The great 
contradiction of the age is wrought out here as it is in Europe. 
Here, as there, the old order, the regime of pride and privileges, 
is still lofty-looking, however desperately stricken with years 
and however fearsomely arrayed against the invincible stand- 
ards of democracy. — Charles Ferguson. 

What ought to be done can be done and if no one else is 
ready you are the one to do it. — Mary Lyon. 

110 



The People's Hour. 



PARADISE REGAINED. 

(Inscribed to Milton, Millet and Markham.) 

Escaped at last Ixion's burning wheels 
Of custom, pride and covetous desire; 
From round of social shams, and friendship's husks; 
From loveless pleasure and from idle power ; 
From care of worthless wealth and all its cost; 
From soul-imprisoning, heart-dividing things ; — 
Escaped alike from surfeit and from need; 
From bread unearned, and sweat unrecompensed ; 
From treadmill round and poisonous dust and din 
Of factory; from swarming sweaters' dens. 
And long, exhausting hours of changeless toil; 
Escaped from fear of want and all its strain, 
From loads of masters and the lords of land — 
We stand erect and free with God once more. 

Where men are free, where gardens grow, God walks- 
As once He walked in Eden — whispering love 
Through every planted seed and fruit and flower; 
In clouds and sunlight, frost and fire. He loves. 
He made the earth for all, and through it pours 
Himself, His life and spirit, to make us gods. 
Our Father works, and work lifts man to stand 
Beside the Deity and share creation's joy. 
'Tis toil that brings us to the heart of things, 
And opens wide the treasure-house divine. 
And builds in man "the music and the dream." 

Ill 



The People's Hour. 

All food, all thought, all things that nourish life 
Grow upward from the clod, where Love lies hid. 

What! Seize, or buy and claim in fee God's breasts, 

God's rounded hemispheres of every good. 

And hold them back from hungered, orphaned ones, 

Dictating use per cents from all who toil, 

Whom force and craft have disinherited — 

So draining workers of wealth and spirit and life, 

The price of lordship being want and wretchedness? 

Dear earth, dear heart of God, exhaustless streams 
Of tender love flow through thy vast, fair bosom! 
Thou art the Infinite Mother of us all. 
Thou are the uncurtained temple of mankind, 
Containing neither Jev/ nor Gentile court, 
Whose only rite is labor, glad and free, 
Where all ahke should serve in joy, and feast 
With ever widening fellowship and power. 

Great source of good — the land — no more may lords 

And priests and judges range themselves between 

To shut us out from Love's sweet fount of life. 

And tribute charge for each approach to God. 

The land is holy, and shall not be sold 

And held in fee by mammon's worshiping class. 

The land is holy — sink the fact in mind ; 

'Tis man, not God, who fences 'round the earth. 

And holds his fellows back from Paradise. 

As heaven is, so is earth, of heaven a part, 

A star among the stars all wonderful, 

A star at hand, to study deeply and long, 

112 



The People's Homy. 

A gate of heaven thrown open wide for all! 
Oh, wait not! Walk on earth the hills of Love, 
And plant the vales, and join the birds at dawn. 
And watch the growing light in answering eyes. 
Heaven reaches, maybe, far beyond the stars — 
But seek it not across the nights of space. 

Free work is blessed with love, with fellowship. 

With joy divine in what our hands create 

Through partnership with God. And goods unpriced— 

Which freely measure out God's love and ours, 

God's life and ours — yield sacramental joy. 

They only live who love, and therefore work. 

By work comes individual health. 

And social harmony, and growing power 

To shape the mold of matter and draw forth 

The world-ideal of God for God-like men. 

This common hoe, with blade of burnished steel, 
This polished shaft, in strong and loving hands. 
Calls forth the latent life in seed and clod. 
Conducts Creation's further thought and plan. 
And makes the fairest dream of beauty live. 
It gathers life for life, associates lives. 
Connects the soul with other growing souls. 
Suggests machines that serve with tireless strength. 
And proves the means of fellowship and power 
By which to reign with God amidst the stars. 



Out of democracy shall come poets, saints, artists, world- 
lovers of an unprecedented kind. How do we know? They 
will come because it is necessar3^ — Charles Ferguson. 

113 



The People's Hour. 



THE GET TOGETHER GOSPEL. 

There is nothing here so wrong that it cannot be righted. 

Cheer up, brothers, come along! 
Nothing's lost, nothing's wasted, nothing's lastingly 
blighted — 

Act together and be strong. 

Solidarity shall save us from Want's wide, weltering 
evils ; 

Sympathy, the masses leaven ; 
Ranked together, we shall vanquish Greed's whole gang 
of devils. 

And from very hell make heaven. 

See ! the sun, by earth's turning, breaks forth each glori- 
ous morning, 

And the clouds drop softening rain. 
We can make the whole earth Eden-like in its adorning; 

We can banish want and pain. 

We can share and share alike in all earth's stores, God- 
given ; 

Capital we too can share ; 
Then machines, our own machines, by tireless forces 
driven, 

Freely, loads for all will bear. 

114 



The People's Hour. 

There is music yet undreamed of ready for rendition, 

There is art for all who work. 
No more hovels, no more cheap things, nevermore sub- 
mission 

To the income-taking shirk. 

Calling man, mere man, our master is not Christian 
meekness ; 

It's the clanking of a chain. 
Brothers, we have naught to lose in union but our 
weakness, 

And we've all the world to gain. 



^ 



Not the most gifted man that ever lived, in the practice of 
any art or science, and paid at the highest rate that exceptional 
genius could demand from those who have worked for their 
money, could ever earn a milHon dollars. It is the landlords 
and the merchant princes, the railroad kings and the coal barons 
(the oppressors to whom you instinctively give the titles of 
tyrants) it is these that make but no man earns them. What 
artist, what physician, what scientist, what poet was ever a mil- 
lionaire? — William Dean Howells. 




115 



The People's Hour. 



WE MUST HAVE A BALLOT-BOX UNION. 

The workers all should organize and ask for higher pay; 
'Tis grand to stand together in a bold and manly way; 
But something more is needed, for, do whatever we like, 
Employers, also organized, can break the strongest strike. 
The class in power will stay in power while working men 

divide 
And vote against each other — they who should vote side 

by side. 
The rich must be defended by the soldiery and laws 
Till the workers get together and vote for labor's cause. 

O workers, weary workers, who stand the rubs and 

knocks, 
The road that leads to freedom runs past the ballot box ! 
'Tis the lesson pressed upon us, the wisdom of the 

hour — 
The ballot is our weapon, the ballot is our power. 

The transportation tyrants subtract enormous toll, 
They stand between producers and all rewards control; 
The gold monopolizers per cents from work demand. 
And billions drawn from labor enrich the lords of land. 
But all this legal plundering at Toil's behest should be 
Itself outlawed forever, that so we may be free. 
We all must vote together for sacred birthrights lost, 
For land and tools and commerce secured to us at cost. 

O workers, fellow workers, etc. 

116 



The People's Hour. 



SUNRISE ON THE HILLS. 

Long has been the night of weeping, 

Hopeless all the period past, 
Moral truth in man was sleeping, 

But his spirit wakes at last. 
Light eternal breaks in splendor, 

Light the pure in spirit fills. 
And through mists come voices tender 

From the sunrise on the hills. 

Through the clouds we glimpse the glory 

Of the sunrise on the hills, 
Sunrise on the hills, sunrise on the hills, 

Sunrise, sunrise, sunrise on the hills. 

Tell to all the sad and sighing, 

Joy has come, has come to reign ; 
Morn approaches, cease your crying. 

Ye who've labored long in pain ; 
Full deliverance day is bringing, 

Error flies with all its ills, 
And the earth breaks forth in singing, 

For 'tis sunrise on the hills. 

Through the clouds, etc. 

Slowly truth from truth evolving 
Fashions forth the form divine, 



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The People's Hour. 

And the clouds and mists dissolving 
Lets the light of justice shine. 

Slowly man, from error turning, 
Meets fraternal love that thrills. 

Meets the growing light that's burning 
In the sunrise on the hills. 

Through the clouds, etc. 



The growth of those corporations to which we give the 
name "trusts" has lessened the force of one stock argument 
against Socialism, and added a wholly new argument in its favor. 
The difficulty of managing colossal enterprises formerly stood 
in many minds as the chief consideration against nationalization 
of capital and industry. What man, or what body of men, can 
possibly be wise and skillful enough to handle such operations? 
They are now, in some instances, in process of handling them, 
and those who wish to change the present order tell us that all 
we have to do is to transfer the ownership of them to the state, 
and let them continue working as they do at present. We have 
found men wise enough to manage the trusts, and probably, in 
most cases, they are honest enough to do so in the interest of the 
stockholders. On the question of honesty the Socialist has the 
advantage in the argument, for he will tell us that with the 
private ownership of capital made impossible by law, the tempta- 
tion to dishonesty is removed. If the Socialistic state could be 
warranted free from "graft," this would constitute the largest 
single argument in its favor. 

As the difficulty of nationalizing production has been reduced, 
the need of it has been increased, for the trusts are becoming 
partial monopolies, able to raise prices, reduce wages, cheapen 
raw materials, and make themselves, if they shall go much farther 
in this line, altogether intolerable. Indeed, the single fact of 
the presence of private monopoly, and the lack of any obvious 
and sure plan of successfully dealing with it, has been enough 
to convert a multitude of intelligent men to the Socialistic view. 
— Prof. John Bates Clark in Atlantic Monthly. 

118 



The People's Hour. 



WHEN MEN ARE WISER. 



Vv^hen men are wiser, overwork and worry, 
The strain of life, the fear and care and hurry ; 
The social pressure, warping, twisting, tempting; 
Diseases foul, the flesh with pain pre-empting; 
Prenatal drafts and lawlessness, entailing 
For generations debts most hard at scaling — 
All the long list of human ills we know, 
With added wisdom we shall yet outgrow. 

When men are wiser, the machines that master 
The force connections, and create wealth faster 
Shall shorten hours for all the weary moilers 
And lighten labor for the host of toilers ; 
To all oppressed, their tireless strength and blessing 
Shall come at length — like hands of power caressing. 
In the near future steel and iron and steam 
And leaping lightning, God's great love shall seem. 

When men are wiser, man as man shall measure, 
And all shall work, and workers all have leisure; 
The strifes and wastes shall cease ; and art inspiring 
And science guiding, work shall not be tiring, 
But Godlike joy in all its wealth creations. 
And fellowship, through mutual ministrations. 

None now conceive how fair the earth shall be 
When man and God and man and man agree. 



119 



The People's Hour. 



A PART OF HEAVEN. 

Know you the earth is heaven, 

A star with stars of even, 

That rhythmic, glorious throng 

Which swell Creation's song? 
Search not the depths, nor yet the- heights above. 
And wait not for a future World of Love. 

The Heart of all the spheres 

Is close to earthly tears, 

Close to the lonely life. 

The spirit worn with strife; 
Fear not to fall where, centered, thou canst rest; 
Rejoice in all, and be supremely blest. 

Exclusiveness is death; 

Inclusiveness, the breath. 

The life, the joy of heaven, 

The lasting good that's given, 
The good that grows, and fills each growing soul 
With all in depths and heights — the boundless whole. 

Give as God's sons must give — 

Service of love — and live 

To finish the fair ideal, 

The plan of the perfect real. 
Together we here must rear the crystal walls 
Of the City of Truth, whose vision from heaven falls. 

120 



The People's Hour. 

O wonderful world to be, 

Building by men left free, 

With socially limitless dower 

Merging and mastering power ! 
Fairer it shall be than dreams of the beauty above, 
With strife and poverty ended by union, by love. 



The fourth commandment is two commandments, one nega- 
tive and the other positive. Usually we think of it only in its 
negative part: "On the seventh day thou shalt do no work," 
But the positive half needs to be emphasized. "Six days shalt 
thou labor." The fourth commandment forbids work on the Sab- 
bath., It commands work on all the other days. The people who 
work only two or three days a week or who do not work at all 
are violating the fourth commandment just as surely as the 
people who work on Sunday. — /. R. Miller. 

Kingdoms rise and crumble, institutions appear and perish, 
fortunes take form and fade. Let us not wonder, for at the 
heart of them all is selfishness — the worm of death. Upon the 
ephemeral Is, presses the eternal Ought. Behind this Ought 
presses the shoulder of God; and under that pressure all things 
change, all things rise and fall — fall Only to re-arise in a restless 
reaching for the Ideal. Only the Ideal endures. What ought to 
be will be — this is my faith. — Edwin Markham. 

They confined their sermons on Sunday to the decorous 
wish-wash in which average men treated in a harmless way sub- 
jects to which the people were indifferent. — Edward Everett Hale. 

It is at our own will whether we see in the despised stream 
the refuse of the street, or, looking deep enough, the image of the 
sky. — Ruskin. 

Life is no idle dream, but a solemn reality based on and en- 
compassed by eternity. Find out your work and stand by it. — 
Carlyle. 

121 



The People's Hour. 



FAITH'S SERVICE. 

For those whose heart-cries meet with stern denial, 
The enslaved, the bruised, the suffering mass beneath 
To whom "good news of good" seems wasted breath, 

And ''kingdom come" a mockery of trial ; 

For freedom's soldiers who must fight and perish 
This side the land where ''milk and honey" flows, 
At most but glimpsing what for others grows, 

And sinking down, at last, with none to cherish — 

What is the good if Hfe be unconnected, 

From naught beginning and to naught returned — 
The dust to dust, the breath where breath is burned — 

With "endless life" a dream to be corrected? 

Is life worth living? Yes, if deemed immortal; 
For, so believing, we have poise and power, 
We grasp the good in every changing hour 

And tread in triumph here Life's starlit portal. 

Is pain worth bearing? Yes, for life's full rounding. 
For births, and social sense and sympathies 
That give great joy to power, pain welcome is. 

All social pain must end in joy abounding. 

Is death worth dying? Yes, if so the spirit. 
Unclothed and clothed upon, can cleave the sky. 
And swifter than the swiftest light waves fly 

To visit worlds the sons of God inherit. 

122 



The People's Hour. 



PROGRESSION. 

There is a harmony heard by listening men, 
The voice of All, divinely leading higher 
The willing, yielding, yearning soul ; and when 
Transfigured peaks are passed we still aspire, 
Still look beyond and long for Deathless Love. 
Each life is infinite in its desire; 
And as the lark that, singing, soars above, 
We rise from earth to heaven and never tire, — 
We lift our longing eyes where glows the Central Fire. 

"All things are yours" : — The broad horizon grows, 
And as it grows each truth more clearly shines; 
Each fact revealed reflects new light and shows 
Truth within truth, the fairer hidden lines 
Of wisdom flashing forth, and Love's designs ; 
And so Love grows more lovely, truth more dear. 
As length and breadth more clearly each defines. 
And richer joys flow in from Love's enlarging lines. 

Progression toward the infinite is ours. 
An endless life, and growing more intense, 
More multiplex, more wondrous in its powers. 
More delicate and deep in every sense. 
Holding the past with growing grasp immense. 
The child, the man, the sage, the angel rise ; 
And each beyond where now archangel towers, 



123 



The People's How. 

Forgetting naught, shall pass, with all surprise, 
Through endless heights of power in Love's unfolding 
skies ! 

The sounds of earth our grosser ears can hear, 
From thunder's depth to highest trill of bird. 
Subdue the ravished soul; yet scales as clear 
In finer, perfect concord shall be heard. 
All power is pitched and vibrant, far and near 
Strung tense ; all actions, keyed, in chords sweep on ; 
Above — ^below — they reach the spirit's ear, 
Vibrations slow, and swiftest light-waves stirred — 
The separate music of each circling sphere. 
And all the stars, we yet shall hear in song, 
While sons of God in joy creation's praise prolong! 

All forms of life, all crystals flashing light, 
All things the senses grasp and mind can know, 
All rolling spheres that, gem the brow of Night 
From three or four score kinds of atoms grow ; 
And if with these variety as seen — 
Dream, blessed souls, of worlds whose kinds shall 

show 
No limit and combine in forms between 
Simple and most complex, in every varying mean ! 

God's life of love in social current runs 
From heart to heart in ever-widening sweep 
Of numbers and of fellowship ; as sons. 
As brothers serving, none, alone, need weep. 
Even the last dread enemy unites 
Past, present, future in the worlds that keep 

124 



The People's Hour. 

Wide open portals; for adown the heights 
Come angel messengers for those who sleep, 
And bear them upward, homeward, past the darkened 
steep. 

Progression ! Hope of every growing mind, 
From child to eldest angel lifted high! 
The thought that thrills, the courage of the blind, 
The growing light which charms the opening eye ! 
(We lose the hope, and straightway wish to die.) 
O blest immortals, sons of God, ye are, 
Born to inherit all of earth and sky. 
With perfect, finer spheres that rise afar, 
Beyond the present range of highest rolling star! 



There is no infinity in just dying; but to see a man that is 
willing to die for love, that goes to meet death in the way, 
that makes a boast of pain, and, with perfect sweetness and 
sanity, celebrates defeat — that is to be witness of the palpable 
infinite. It is like an arrow passing swiftly up into the air 
and not returning; like the still energy of planets or the re- 
sistless growing of the grass, or like the haunting, thrilling 
murmur of remembered music that faded down the avenue as 
the soldiers went to war. You are left endlessly expectant; 
you cannot come to an end, but must follow that which is 
beyond, and still beyond. — Charles Ferguson. 

What but the greatest things can come of the nation that 
has conceived the idea of the sacredness of labor, and that has 
sincerely expected prophets from the back-country, and salva- 
tion out of Nazareth 1 This inspiration is not of the old order 
of things, nor by any means to be conciliated therewith. It is 
a blast of destruction for the old order, and a breath of crea- 
tion for the new. — Charles Ferguson. 

Life and religion are one thing or neither is anything. — 
George Macdonald. 

125 



The People's Hour. 



HEAVEN. 

Since Science needs a central source of motion, 

And so of beauty, wisdom, spirit, mind, 
There is a Heart that claims the heart's devotion, 

There is a Friend whose plans are wise and kind. 

On northern heights — as told in olden story — 
Around the Throne, the axis of the skies, 

Jerusalem, the golden goal of glory, 
Creation's great metropolis, doth rise ! 

It crowns a vaster central world supernal 

That swings the universe with steadfast power, 

A sphere translucent in the Light Eternal, 

And Love's full heart throbs through it hour by hour. 

Surpassing dreams of grandeur, richness, splendor, 
Of beauty's tints and forms and music's swell, 

And aethers fine and sensories most tender — 
Must be the place where perfect spirits dwell. 

A morning land of flowers — its changeful breezes 
Have filled the air with every sweet perfume ; 

And near and far the wondrous prospect pleases, 
A grand mosaic work of tint and bloom ! 

The blessed wake where glory makes its dwelling, 
A City vast through shifting clouds is seen ; 

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The People's Hour. 

And answering choirs, from outmost heights, are swelling 
The notes of song, which linger long between! 

Yet this would tire. Since something more than singing 
And Sabbath rest unending souls require. 

Let science last, its endless problems bringing; 
Let love work out its limitless desire. 

There is no finished heaven. Beauty is growing-^ 
Within, without through finite minds and strength; 

City and country there, as here, are showing 
Perpetual change throughout their breadth and length. 

Twere well to escape from drudgery distasteful, 
From wearying tasks, o'ertaxing strength and skill; 

But mastering power, with energy unwasteful, 
Creative art in heaven shall bless us still. 

Where work is art, there work is "joy forever" — 
And growing dreams and schemes need boundless 
room ; 

The far-hid stars the abyss would seem to sever, 
Even here by art from outer darkness come. 

As man has mastered earthly space and forces, 
So, and much more, the heavenly he shall bind, 

Till galaxies on galaxies in sweeping courses 
Transfer his thoughts and bow before his mind. 

The heaven of heavens must be the social center 
Where all the minds of all the ages meet; 

And worlds beneath, whose teeming millions enter, 
May each be made a fair suburban seat. 

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The People's Hour. 

And heaven flung out shall yet include creation 
In all its depth and height and widening range; 

Its central sphere and farthest constellation, 

For social ends, our work shall change and change. 

And on, and on, forever and forever. 

Before the Throne, or at creation's marge 

Watching the awful forces bind and sever, 

Our sense of Power and Wisdom shall enlarge. 

But oh, to think of truth for aye unfolding. 

Of reason's widening range and memory's sweep, 

The past and present full and clear beholding. 
And outward spaces answering, deep on deep ! 

Love wills, Love fills the far, concentric measures. 

Attraction's lamps, which light the shoreless vast. 
Pendant and polar, lead to endless pleasures, 

And over which no shades of night are cast. 

By mighty angels borne, aforetime mortals 

Through centering, star-strewn highways yet shall rise, 

And, strengthened, pass the pearl-like shaded portals 
Of that all-wondrous City of the skies. 

And oh, my heart, thy longed-for Home is yonder; 

Nor empty will it be, nor strange will seem ; 
Its group is growing, and they watch and wonder 

If each approaching pilgrim comes to them! 

A shimmering tide rolls past palatial mansions; 
A crystal structure near of plan divine; 

128 



The People's Hour. 

A garden fair of Eden-like expansions; 
An open door and golden threshold shine; 

A smiling face enframed, a form of brightness, 
Substantial, and athrill with tireless powers. 

Arrayed in robes of soft and silvery whiteness — 
Fair, and more fair, through life's unfolding hours ! 

From heart to heart our earth-life love was flowing, 
When death removed thee — soon to memory lost; 

Yet still the fountain grew, and in its growing 
Piled up a stream like that where Israel crossed. 

Sweet mother, mine — ^bright, promised place of meet- 
ing— 

My filial thoughts and fancies center there. 
And all the love of years will flow in greeting 

When reunited in that world so fair! 

A long embrace, and tenderest kisses falling, 

My dearest angel, on thy starry brow ; 
A long-lost voice in sweetest tones recalling 

The baby boy that man-like meets thee now! 

And then — O heaven! — with infinite, passionate yearn- 
ing, 

In view of depths beneath and heights above. 
The soul its Source shall seek, and, throneward turning. 

Itself behold the thorn-marked face of Love ! 



Note. — The celebrated mathematician and astronomer M. 
Lambert, in his "Letters on Cosmogony," suggests that all the 
stars in the universe are bound together in systems ; that all the 

129 



The People's Hour. 



systems are in motion ; that the individual stars or suns of each 
system move round a common center of gravity, which may 
possibly be a large opaque globe ; and that all the systems of 
the universe, as one related system, revolve around some grand 
center, common to the whole. "All those systems of worlds," 
says the astronomer, "resemble, but in different scale, the solar 
system, inasmuch as in each the stars of which it is composed 
revolve round a common center, in the same manner as the 
planets and comets revolve round the sun. It is even probable 
that several individual systems concur in forming more general 
systems, and so on. Such, for example, as are comprehended 
in the Milky Way, will make component parts of a more en- 
larged system; and this way will belong to other milky ways, 
with which it will constitute a whole. If these last are invisible 
to us, it is by reason of their immense distance. It would not be 
at all astonishing, if milky ways, situated still farther from us 
in the depths of the heavens, should make no impression on the 
eye whatever." Again M. Lambert says : "The sum of the 
milky ways, taken together, have their common center of revolu- 
tion ; but how far soever we may thus extend the scale we must 
necessarily stop at last; and where? At the center of centers, 
at the center of creation, which I should be inclined to term 
the capital of the universe, inasmuch as thence originates mo- 
tion of every kind, and there stands the great wheel in which 
all the rest have their indentation. From thence the laws are 
issued which govern and uphold the universe, or, rather, there 
they resolve themselves into one law of all others the most sim- 
ple. But who would be competent to measure the space and 
time which all the globes, all the worlds, all the worlds of 
worlds, employ in revolving round that immense body — the 
Throne of Nature and the Footstool of the Divinity! What 
painter, what poet, what imagination is sufficiently exalted to 
describe the beauty, the magnificence, the grandeur of this source 
of all that is beautiful, great, magnificent, and from which order 
and harmony flow in eternal streams through the whole bounds 
of the universe !" 

After ISO years of marvelous advance in scientific knowledge, 
since the above was suggested by the famous Frenchman, all 
scientists are in agreement concerning the universality of gravi- 
tation, and not one known fact fails to accord with the concep- 
tion of a "center of centers" giving motion and law to all. 

G. H. G. 



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TOGETHER. 

As midnight turned toward Christmas morn- 

So runs the ancient story — 
Across the night that Christ was born 

Heaven opened forth its glory. 
Its host of angels sang of peace, 

Good will to all who labor, 
A coming time when strife should cease 

And each should love his neighbor. 

Oh, slowly, slowly men have learned 

To feel for one another, 
And common interests discerned 

To make of each a brother. 
But now fraternal circles grow, 

And stronger grows the tether; 
We feel the man, a man we know, 

And so we stand together. 

Oppression, still intrenched and strong, 

Would yoke our necks, as cattle; 
But organized we face the wrong, 

And man for man shall battle. 
Not czar nor emperor nor trust, 

Their utmost forces wielding. 
Can crush the mass-man in the dust, 

Or make his spirit yielding. 



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The People's Hour. 



Ho, comrades, men, believe again 

That all the earth inherit. 
Let's join our hands in loyal bands 

And claim the part we merit. 
O workers, workers everywhere, 

Come on, let's stand together; 
Let's put an end to want and care. 

Let's mass for stormy weather! 

Together — clouds of war shall clear, 

And strife at last be ended ; 
Together — good is here, is here. 

Through brotherhood extended. 
"Together" is the gospel true 

Of power and peace and healing; 
"Together" is the kingdom due, 

A world of joy revealing. 



This shall be the land of change, flux, progress ; every- 
thing must flow. We will have nothing fixed and settled, since 
nothing in nature is fixed and settled — not the ribs of the 
earth nor the anatomy of a man. We take everything to be 
plastic, and we do not think that any beautiful thing is im- 
possible. We expect the miraculous according to the ordinary 
run. — Charles Ferguson. 

Democracy, regarded as a balloting contrivance for equat- 
ing the hoof and claw of warring private interests, is an in- 
genious futility. Let it pass now to its place in the museums 
of antiquities along with the devices for the solution of im- 
possible mechanical problems, like that of perpetual motion. — 
Charles Ferguson. 

You knock a man into the ditch and then you tell him to re- 
main content -in the position in which Providence has placed 
him. — John Ruskin. 

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The People's Hour. 



ADDENDUM 



MONOPOLY VERSUS THE PEOPLE. 

Our best American manhood is coming to despise the soiled 
plume of modern success. It is coming to be not content to 
have while its brothers have not. It is coming to see that it is 
just as cruel, just as immoral, to knock a man down with one's 
intellect as to knock him down with one's fist. A new manhood 
is coming to birth that is too noble to live in idleness while little 
children anywhere are turning the wheels of the world. 

The so-called successful persons have got the world's civili- 
zation into a tangle resembling a deadlock and have neither the 
intelligence nor philosophic insight with which to solve the prob- 
lems confronting them. The shoe manufacturing industry of 
this country with the help of the present modern machinery can 
now make in six months all the shoes the ''market" under the 
present system can absorb. Six months' work per year at a 
wage determined by one hungry man bidding against other 
hungry men will not keep the shoemakers and their families in 
comfort. 

What's to be done? Are the shoemakers to go barefoot be- 
cause they've produced too many shoes? Are the mill hands to 
go naked because they've produced too much clothing? Are 
the bakers to go hungry because they've produced too much 
bread? Here are men able and willing to work, who cannot 
earn enough money to buy back the things which their own 
hands have produced! What has modern capitalism to say to 
this? Nothing! What is its responsibility? Everything! It 
has congress, the state legislatures, the courts. Its political 
servants whine for the votes of the workingmen; but the work- 
ers are not represented. The workers scarcely know there is a 

133 



The People's Hour. 



law until it lays its heavy hand upon them when they attempt 
by collective bargaining to better their condition. But the 
workers are learning at the rate of about 100,0(X) votes per year 
that they can build their own political party, and finance it, and 
control it. The day is coming when the workers will be well 
enough organized to say to the minority class which owns the 
instruments of production and distribution : ''Gentlemen, we now 
ask you to operate industry so that things will be produced for 
use instead of for profit; so that where there is enough to spare 
for all, no one need go starved and naked. If you cannot find a 
way to abolish involuntary poverty; if with every facility for 
making a sane and reasonable world you show your incapacity 
to do it; then, as we outnumber you 20 to 1, and have the ballot, 
and can make laws with that ballot, we will condemn and take 
over your plants and operate them for the public good." 

That, gentlemen, is Socialism. Is it anything to be afraid 
of? No, not by men; only by those creatures so poor in spirit 
that they hope to carry off^, sooner or later, from under the pres- 
ent system what never could belong to them rightfully and which, 
they think, could not accrue to them under conditions of equality 
of opportunity. 

If Socialism will not mend these fearful conditions, then 
what will? We offer you our plan. You do not like it? Then 
what is your plan? For a plan must be devised and devised 
quickly. Those men who hope from fortune and favor more 
than from industry and desert must find a subtler method of 
extracting their living from the producing classes than by the 
private ownership of the material resources of life. They must 
not only find this subtler method, but they must justify it before 
men who have as keen brains as they have. 

Do not believe that the Socialist movement is only the 
economic revolt of the working class. It is the mightiest moral 
revolt the world has ever seen. It is the world-wide cry of out- 
raged humanity; and men and women from every walk of life 
are coming to see that the working class, in refusing longer to 
countenance an outworn and conscienceless economic system, are 
to be the saviors of mankind. 

The most profound writers and thinkers of the world today 
are Socialists. The whole trend of economic development is 

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The People's Hour. 

toward Socialism. Can unimaginative and shallow-witted per- 
sons whose idea of progress and prosperity is the accumulation 
of other people's property — can such as these cope with a move- 
ment based upon the physical strength of the working class shot 
through with the light of the keenest intelligence of the race? — 
Franklin H. W entworth in debate before the Economic Club at 
SpringHeldj Mass. 

THE BASIS OF THE STRUGGLE. 

If we of America seem plunged into a period of unrest and 
battle and strife, when we should all so much rather be at 
peace, enjoying fellowship with the many finely attuned na- 
tures now arrayed in some opposing camp, we may comfort 
ourselves with the thought that ours is the common lot, and that 
no people enjoys peace except at the expense of racial destruc- 
tion. Kever until the evils growing out of social maladjust- 
ments are cured can the nation be quiet and content. Not even 
in complete surrender of the strugglers for the weak to the might 
of the strong is there peace; for the people that have once 
caught the vision of a society redeemed, while they may fall 
to the depths devoted to lost and decadent peoples, can never 
feel the content of the slave, even, who is coming up through 
servitude from savagery. The children of Israel serving in 
Egypt surely had a subconscious pride which the outcasts and 
vassals bowing to Vespasian never could have possessed. The 
decadent people are always miserable, even after they have defi- 
nitely accepted degradation as their all in all. 

And here is the basis of the struggle in America : There are 
those, high in power and strong in intellect, many of them, who 
do not believe that the evils we suffer come from social malad- 
justments. They think the poor man, or the criminal, or the ig- 
norant, or the weak, the architect of his own fortune. They can 
thread the slum or inspect the tenement with a sincere belief 
that these people are so situated by reason of inevitable evils, or 
of their own fault or failure, and not because of misdirected so- 
cial forces which are capable of correction by an aroused de- 
mocracy. They regard the industrial situation in America as, 
on the whole, about what it should be. They look upon the huge 

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The People's Hour. 

accumulations of capital and huger accumulations of power 
which we call the trusts, as agencies of men who rule because, 
on the whole they are best fitted for the rulership. They may 
not be religious men, but they fervently believe that the obscure 
and indigent should follow the text of the ritual which bids us to 
be content in that sphere to which Providence has called us, and 
they regard as a Divine recognition of an immutable condition 
the passage which said of Judea of old, "The poor ye have always 
with you." 

Such men and such statesmen do not exactly believe that 
whatever is, is right, but they believe fully in the game as it is 
played, in the huge percentage that gives to the "house," the sys- 
tem of chances that divides the wealth of the nation into two 
piles, one of which is the spoil of the very few who get it in im- 
mense lots, and the other the pittances of the very many who get 
it in pitifully small portions. They believe that the game should 
be played "on the square" but that any other game than this 
prince-making, pauper-creating game of monopoly and exploita- 
tion is possible they do not for a moment believe. And like all 
members of the gambling fraternity, they are apt to be fine, 
hearty, open-hearted, companionable good fellows. It is a pity 
that we cannot be friends with them. It is certainly our loss. 

But there are some of us who cannot be friends with them. 
There is another plane of thought into which some have entered. 
It holds up a vision of a society redeemed by true democracy. 
It believes in a time when monopoly shall be no more, and labor 
and capital, no longer at war, shall cooperate to the wiping out 
of involuntary and undeserved poverty in an era of industrial 
equality and social peace. Believers in this may not be very 
religious, either, but they thrill to the divine democracy of the 
Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount. They believe in the 
changing of the rules of the game. They seek to eliminate the 
percentage that goes to the nonproductive "house" and to make 
production a sure thing for all, open to all hands on equal terms, 
wherein wealth shall go to the producers in proportions fixed 
by their individual contributions to production. In short, these 
have the vision of a society redeemed by the institutional appli- 
cation of the principles of Jesus, of Jefferson, of Lincoln. So 
believing, they cannot lay down their arms, no matter who takes 

136 



The People's Hour. 

the field against them. The other side may be overwhelming in 
numbers and position, but to the man filled with this ideal, this 
makes no difference. "As for me and my house" says he, "we 
will serve the Lord." — Senator La Follette, in La Follette's, July 
31, 1909. 



Equality of political rights leads inevitably to the demand for 
equality of conditions, that is to say, the apportionment of well- 
being according to work accomplished. Universal sufifrage de- 
mands as its complement universal well-being; for it is a para- 
dox that the people should be at once wretched and sovereign. 
A.S Aristotle and Montesquieu so continually insist, democratic 
institutions presuppose equality of conditions, for otherwise the 
poor elector will use his vote to pass laws for the increase of his 
share of the good things of life at the expense of the privileged 
classes. — Laveleye. 

If the spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will 
burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's 
central fire, it may be smothered for a time, the ocean may over- 
whelm it, mountains may press it down, but its inherent and un- 
conquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at 
some time or other, in some place or other, the volcano will 
break out and flame up to heaven. — Daniel Webster, at dedica- 
tion of Bunker Hill Monument. 



Democracy is greater than any nation ; it may be balked, 
delayed, defeated ; but it is unconquerable. The very life of the 
modern world is in it, and though today only the children should 
understand its secret it would certainly prevail. — Charles Fergu- 
son. 

Two things fill my spirit with ever fresh and increasing 
wonder and awe, the oftener and the more steadfastly my 
thoughts occupy themselves therewith — the starry heavens above 
me and the moral law within me. . . . The first begins from 
the place which I occupy in the world of space, and extends the 
connection in which I stand, to invisible space beyond the eye 
of man, with worlds on worlds, systems on systems, to their 
periodical movements in endless time, their beginning and con- 
tinuance. The second begins with my unseen self, my person- 
ality, and places me in a world which has true eternity, but 
which is perceptible only to the understanding, and with which 
I am conscious of being, not as in the former case, in accidental, 
but in universal and indispensable connection. — Kant. 

137 



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